sighed; "but any
impression I may make is neutralised by her association with those
Vandegrifts. It is an absurd arrangement, spending half her time down
there."

"I think you are rather in the lead, aren't you, my dear?"

Mrs. Pennington shrugged her shoulders, but there was some triumph in
her smile. "She is a dear child, in spite of some absurd notions, and
I long to see her well and safely settled. I don't quite know in what
her charm most lies, but she has it."

"Oh, it's her youth, and the conviction that it is all so jolly well
worth while. She is so keen about everything." There was an odd twinkle
in Mr. Pennington's eyes, usually so piercing beneath their bushy grey
brows. Margaret Elizabeth called him Uncle Gerry. It was amusing. He
liked it, and enjoyed playing the part of Uncle Gerry. "Of course she's
bound to get over that. Still, I shouldn't be in any haste to settle
her."

His wife thought of her brother, the Professor of Archaeology, now in
the Far East. "It is queer, but Dick never has," she said, answering
the first part of his sentence. But when she spoke again, it was to
say energetically: "The Towers needs a mistress, and August is
irreproachable. Really, I am devoted to the boy."

Mr. Pennington found this amusing.

"If only it were a colonial house. It is handsome, but I prefer simpler
lines," Mrs. Pennington continued meditatively.

The Towers was a combination of feudal castle and Swiss chalet erected
thirty years before by the parents of Augustus, and occupying a
commanding position on Sunset Ridge. The irreverent sometimes referred
to it as the Salt Shakers.

Margaret Elizabeth meanwhile, in the solitude of her own room, was
asking herself questions, for which she found no answers.

"Who--oh, who was this person with the nice friendly eyes that led one
on to talk about fairy godmothers?"

She considered it in profound seriousness for a time, then suddenly
broke into unrestrained laughter.

CHAPTER SIX

_In which Margaret Elizabeth is discussed at the Breakfast Table; in
which also, later on, she and Virginia and Uncle Bob talk before the
fire, and in which finally Margaret Elizabeth seeks consolation by
relating to Uncle Bob her adventure in the park._

"No, she is not regularly beautiful," remarked Dr. Prue in her
diagnostician manner as she poured her father's second cup of coffee,
"but there is much that is captivating about her. Her hair grows
prettily on her for