ean up against a wall and have a crowd of mechanical
toys tell you that your eyes are like evening stars and all that rot. I
should say _not_."

"Well, what would you like to do?"

"I'd like to go riding and hunting with Dad, live in a great country
house, with lots of snow in winter and tobogganing--" She broke off with
a sudden suspicion. "Say, am I boring you?"

"You are not," he said with emphasis.

[Illustration: "'Say, you're a judge of muscle, aren't you?'"]

"You don't like that society flub-dub either, do you?" she continued
confidentially. "Lord, these dolled up women make me tired. I'd like to
jounce them ten miles over the hills. Say, you're a judge of muscle,
aren't you?"

"In a way."

"What do you think of that?" She held out a cool firm forearm for his
inspection and he was in this intimate position when Doris came down the
great stairway, with her willowy, trailing elegance. She gave a quick
glance of her dark eyes at the unconventional group, with Romp in the
middle an interested spectator, and said:

"Have I been keeping you hours? I hope this child's been amusing you."

The child, being at this moment perfectly screened, retorted by a
roguish wink which almost upset Bojo's equanimity. The two sisters
were an absolute contrast. In her two seasons Doris had been converted
into a complete woman of the world; she had the grace that was the grace
of art, yet undeniably effective; stunning was the term applied to her.
Her features were delicate, thinly turned, and a quality of precious
fragility was about her whole person, even to the conscious moods of her
smile, her enthusiasm, her serious poising for an instant of the eyes,
which were deep and black and lustrous as the artfully pleasing masses
of her hair. But the charm that was gone was the charm that looked up at
him from the unconscious twilight eyes of the younger sister!

"Patsie, you terrible tomboy--will you ever grow up!" she said
reprovingly. "Look at your dress and your hair. I never saw such a
little rowdy. Now run along like a dear. Mother's waiting."

But Patsie maliciously declined to hurry. She insisted that she had
promised to show off Romp and, abetted by Bojo in this deception, she
kept her sister waiting while she put the dog through his tricks and--to
cap the climax went off with a bombshell.

"My, you two don't look a bit glad to see each other--you look as
conventional as Dolly and the Duke."

"Heavens," said Doris w