returned to the thrice repeated call, and the silence which the summons
had broken settled once more over the garden. Not a leaf on even one of
the topmost twigs of the huge old elms from underneath which that
insistent voice had come was stirring, not an insect chirped, and the
birds who held morning and evening concerts among the branches were
silent now.

"Margaret Anstruther, will you come and play tennis? My brothers Reginald
and Lionel want a game, and if you will play we shall be four, and
because you have not had much practice lately you shall play with
Reginald, for he plays better than Lionel."

Greystones was noted for its elm-trees. The grounds, indeed, contained
little else in the shape of flowers or trees but elms. For a few brief
weeks in spring when they were dressed in the tenderest of greens they
were lovely, and in the autumn, if the leaves were not stripped off by
gales before they had a chance to turn golden, their hues could vie with
those flaunted by any other trees, but in the summer their dull, uniform
green was apt to become monotonous, and Margaret Anstruther was then wont
to declare that she could cheerfully have rooted up every one of them.

But as the remark never reached any one else's ears but her own, no one's
feelings were hurt. A chance visitor to Greystones, regular visitors were
not encouraged, had once observed that the entire grounds, some thirty or
forty acres in extent, which comprised the domain must have been an elm
wood originally, and that a space just sufficient on which to erect a
house of moderate dimensions had been cleared in the heart of it,
Greystones had been built, a way cut through the trees to form a drive to
the road a quarter of a mile distant from the house, and the rest of the
wood left undisturbed to be called a garden or not as the owner pleased.

Certainly the present owner had made no attempt to form a garden, but had
allowed the elms to grow right up to the walls of the house and to darken
the windows of the gloomily situated dwelling as much as they pleased.

"Margaret Anstruther, if you will not come and play tennis, will you come
for a ride upon your bicycle--that nice new one that you received as a
present from--from your grandfather." Here the speaker paused and laughed
as if the idea of Margaret Anstruther getting a bicycle from her
grandfather was a distinctly amusing idea. "We will go far, far along to
the blue distance--much farther than you e