led peremptorily, as Ann humbly shook her
head, "Miss Ann's not seen the cow--or the, chickens--nor the horses!"

"Isn't it scandalous?" agreed Kate. "It shows what sort of hostess I am,
doesn't it? But you see, Worth, I thought as long as you were coming so
soon you could do the honors of the stables. I think it's always a little
more satisfactory to have a man do those things."

"I'll take you now," announced Worth, in manner which brooked neither
delay nor gratitude.

And so the girl and the little boy and the two puppies, the joy of motion
freeing them from the sad weight of inquirer and universalist, started
across the lawn for the stables. Pourquoi caught at Ann's dress and she
had to be manfully rescued by Worth. And no sooner had the inquirer been
loosened from one side than the universalist was firmly fastened to the
other and the rescue must be enacted all over again, amid considerable
confusion and laughter. Ann's laugh was borne to Katie on a wave of the
spring--just the laugh of a girl playing with a boy and his dogs.

It was a whole hour later, and as Kate was starting out for golf she saw
Ann and Worth sitting on the sandpile, a tired inquirer and very weary
universalist asleep at their feet. Ann was picking sand up in her hands
and letting it sift through. Worth was digging with masculine vigor. Kate
passed close enough to hear Ann's, "Well, once upon a time--"

Ann!--opening to a little child the door of that wondrous country of Once
upon a Time! No mother had ever done it more sweetly, with more tender
zeal, more loving understanding of the joys and necessities of Once upon
a Time. Some once upon a time notions of Kate's were quite overturned by
that "once upon a time" voice of Ann's. Then the once upon a time of the
sandpile did not shut them out--they who had known another once upon a
time? Did it perhaps love to take them in, knowing that upon the sands of
this once upon a time the other could keep no foothold?

"Once upon a Time--Once upon a Time"--it kept singing itself in her ears.
For her, too, it opened a door.

CHAPTER IX

Having conquered the son, Katie that evening set vigorously about for the
conquest of the father.

"The trouble is," she turned it over in giving a few minutes to her own
toilet for dinner, after having given many minutes to Ann's, "that
there's simply no telling about Wayne. He is just the most provokingly
uncertain man now living."

And yet it was not a