Klines were only "floating people," boarding
about,--not permanently valuable as acquaintances; well enough to know
when one met them,--that was all. Mrs. Thoresby had daughters; she was
obliged to calculate as to what was worth while. Mrs. Linceford had an
elegant establishment in New York; she had young sisters to bring out;
there was suitability here; and the girls would naturally find
themselves happy together.

Dakie Thayne developed brilliantly at croquet. He and Leslie, with Etty
Thoresby, against Imogen and the Haddens, swept triumphantly around the
course, and came in to the stake, before there had been even a "rover"
upon the other side. Except, indeed, as they were _sent_ roving, away
off over the bank and down the road, from the sloping, uneven
ground,--the most extraordinary field, in truth, on which croquet was
ever attempted. But then you cannot expect a level, velvet lawn on the
side of a mountain.

"Children always get the best of it at croquet,--when they know anything
at all," said Imogen Thoresby discontentedly, throwing down her mallet.
"You 'poked' awfully, Etty."

Etty began an indignant denial; unable to endure the double accusation
of being a child,--she, a girl in her fourteenth year,--and of "poking."
But Imogen walked away quite unconcernedly, and Jeannie Hadden followed
her. These two, as nearest in age, were growing intimate. Ginevra was
almost too old,--she was twenty.

They played a four-ball game then; Leslie and Etty against Elinor and
Dakie Thayne. But Elinor declared--laughing, all the same, in her
imperturbably good-natured way--that not only Etty's pokes were against
her, but that Dakie would _not_ croquet Leslie's ball downhill. Nothing
ever really put Elinor Hadden out, the girls said of her, except when
her hair wouldn't go up; and then it was funny to see her. It was a
sunbeam in a snarl, or a snow flurry out of a blue sky. This in
parenthesis, however; it was quite true, as she alleged, that Dakie
Thayne had taken up already that chivalrous attitude toward Leslie
Goldthwaite which would not let him act otherwise than as her loyal
knight, even though opposed to her at croquet.

"You'll have enough of that boy," said Mrs. Linceford, when Leslie came
in, and found her at her window that overlooked the wickets. "There's
nothing like a masculine creature of that age for adoring and
monopolizing a girl two or three years older. He'll make you mend his
gloves, and he'll beg you