ch? Do you know,
also, that I am nearly fourteen, and that there is nobody in this house
near enough my age to be very companionable? I have asked them to send
me to school, and mother is considering it."

She leaned against his shoulder, curly head bent, thoughtfully studying
the turquoise ring on her slim finger. It was her first ring. Nina had
let Boots give it to her.

"What a tall girl you are growing into!" he said, encircling her waist
with one arm. "Your mother was like you at fourteen. . . . Did she ever
tell you how she first met your father? Well, I'll tell you then. Your
father was a schoolboy of fifteen, and one day he saw the most wonderful
little girl riding a polo pony out of the Park. Her mother was riding
with her. And he lost his head, and ran after her until she rode into
the Academy stables. And in he went, headlong, after her, and found her
dismounted and standing with her mother; and he took off his hat, and he
said to her mother: 'I've run quite a long way to tell you who I am: I
am Colonel Gerard's son, Austin. Would you care to know me?'

"And he looked at the little girl, who had curls precisely like yours,
and the same little nose and mouth. And that little girl, who is now
your mother, said very simply: 'Won't you come home to luncheon with us?
May he, mother? He has run a very long way to be polite to us.'

"And your mother's mother looked at the boy for a moment, smiling, for
he was the image of his father, who had been at school with her. Then
she said: 'Come to luncheon and tell me about your father. Your father
once came a thousand miles to see me, but I had started the day before
on my wedding-trip.'

* * * * *

"And that is how your father first met your mother, when she was a
little girl."

Drina laughed: "What a funny boy father was to run after a strange girl
on a polo pony! . . . Suppose--suppose he had not seen her, and had not
run after her. . . . Where would I be now, Uncle Philip? . . . Could you
please tell me?"

"Still aloft among the cherubim, sweetheart."

"But--whose uncle would you be? And who would Boots have found for a
comrade like me? . . . It's a good thing that father ran after that polo
pony. . . . Probably God arranged it. Do you think so?"

"There is no harm in thinking it," he said, smiling.

"No; no harm. I've known for a long while that He was taking care of
Boots for me until I grow up. Meanwhile, I know some very