uld be queer
not to pay any attention to him. He's all alone, too, and there are such
a lot of us. I don't want to do anything out-of-the-way, Hope, but I do
wish we could get acquainted with him."

"Wait till papa comes home, dear," Hope said, with the gentleness which
had gained her so many victories over her tempestuous young sisters.
"That will only be two or three weeks, and he will know what is the best
thing to do."

"Maybe, unless the new Madame is a prig," Theodora said restively. "She
may be worse than you are, Hope; but I doubt it. Never mind," she added
sagely to herself, as she left the room; "it is two weeks till then, and
there's plenty of chance for things to happen, before they get home."

CHAPTER TWO

Lying far at the side of the little suburban town, the McAlisters'
grounds were of a size and beauty which entitled them to be ranked as
one of the few so-called "places" that dominated the closely-built
streets of the town. The land ran all up and down hill, here coaxed into
a smooth-cropped lawn, there carpeted with the moss and partridge vines
which had been left to grow over the rocks in undisturbed possession.
Here and there, too, were outcrops of the rock, ragged, jutting ledges
full of the nooks and crannies which delight the souls of children from
one generation to another. The grounds had been, for the most part, left
as nature had made them, full of little curves and hillocks and dimples;
but the great glory of the place lay in its trees. No conventional elms
and maples were they, but the native trees of the forest, huge-bodied
chestnuts, tall, straight-limbed oaks, jagged hickories which blazed
bright gold in the autumn and shot back the sunlight from every leafy
twig, and an occasional cedar or two, from which came the name of the
place, The Savins.

Less than a year after his first marriage, Dr. McAlister had bought the
place, going far out of the town for the purpose. At that time, he was
regarded as little short of a maniac, to prefer land on the ridge to the
smooth, conventional little lawns of the middle of the town, where one
house was so like another that the inhabitants might have followed the
example of the Mad Tea Party and moved up a place, without suffering any
inconvenience from the change. It was years before the townspeople
dropped the story of Mrs. McAlister's first attempt to choose a site for
the house, of her patiently sitting on top of the rail fence, while her