nting a small forefinger.

"Patty Swain, if you must know!" I cried, and added boylike: "And she is
just as good as you or me, and better." I was quite red in the face,
and angry because of it. "This is Dorothy Manners, Patty, and Will
Fotheringay."

The moment was a pregnant one. But I was resolved to carry the matter
out with a bold front. "Will you join us at catch and swing?" I asked.

Will promptly declared that he would join, for Patty was good to look
upon. Dolly glanced at her dress, tossed her head, and marched back
alone.

"Oh, Richard!" cried Patty; "I shall never forgive myself! I have made
you quarrel with--"

"His sweetheart," said Will, wickedly.

"I don't care," said I. Which was not so.

Patty felt no resentment for my miss's haughty conduct, but only a
tearful penitence for having been the cause of a strife between us.
Will's arguments and mine availed nothing. I must lift her over the
wall again, and she went home. When we reached the garden we found
Dolly seated beside her mother on my grandfather's bench, from which
stronghold our combined tactics were powerless to drag her.

When Dolly was gone, I asked my grandfather in great indignation why
Patty did not play with the children I knew, with Dorothy and the
Fotheringays. He shook his head dubiously. "When you are older, Richard,
you will understand that our social ranks are cropped close. Mr. Swain
is an honest and an able man, though he believes in things I do not.
I hear he is becoming wealthy. And I have no doubt," the shrewd old
gentleman added, "that when Patty grows up she will be going to the
assemblies, though it was not so in my time." So liberal was he that
he used to laugh at my lifting her across the wall, and in his leisure
delight to listen to my accounts of her childish housekeeping. Her life
was indeed a contrast to Dorothy's. She had all the solid qualities that
my lady lacked in early years. And yet I never wavered in my liking
to the more brilliant and wayward of the two. The week before my next
birthday, when Mr. Carvel drew me to him and asked me what I wished for
a present that year, as was his custom, I said promptly:

"I should like to have Patty Swain at my party, sir."

"So you shall, my lad," he cried, taking his snuff and eying me
with pleasure. "I am glad to see, Richard, that you have none of Mr.
Marmaduke's nonsense about you. She is a good girl, i' faith, and more
of a lady now than many who call themselv