en charm, she had exercised the arts of
coquetry, this test was on a larger scale. This was the potential
conquest of an institution. Could she make a newspaper change its hue,
as she could make men change color, with the power of a word or the
incitement of a glance? The very dubiety of the issue gave a new zest to
the game.

Behold, now, Miss Esme Elliot, snarer of men's eyes and hearts,
sharpening her wits and weapons for the fray; aye, even preparing her
pitfall. Cunningly she made a bower of one end of the broad living-room
at Greenvale with great sprays of apple blossoms from the orchard,
ravishing untold spoilage of her mother and forerunner, Eve, for the
bedecking of the quiet, cozy nook. Pink was ever her color; the hue of
the flushing of spring, of the rising blood in the cheek of maidenhood,
and the tenderest of the fruit-blooms was not more downy-soft of tint
than the face it bent to brush. At the close of the task, a heavy voice
startled her.

"What's all this about?"

"Uncle Guardy! You mustn't, you really mustn't come in on tiptoe that
way."

"Stamped like an elephant," asserted Dr. Elliot. "But you were so
immersed in your floral designs--What kind of a play is it?"

She turned upon him the sparkle of golden lights in wine-brown eyes.
"It's a fairy bower. I'm going to do a bewitchment."

"Upon what victim?"

"Upon a newspaper. I'm going to be a fairy godmother sort of witch and
save my foster-child by--by arointing something out of print."

"Doing _what_?"

"Arointing it. Don't you know, you say, 'Aroint thee, witch,' when you
want to get rid of her? Well, if a witch can be arointed, why shouldn't
she aroint other things?"

"All very well, if you understand the process. Do you?"

"Of course. It's done 'with woven paces and with waving arms.' 'Beware,
beware; her flashing eyes, her float--'"

"Stop it! You shall not make a poetry cocktail out of Tennyson and
Coleridge, and jam it down my throat; or I'll aroint myself. Besides,
you're not a witch, at all. I know you for all your big cap, and your
cloak, and the basket on your arm. 'Grandmother, what makes your teeth
so white?'"

"No, no. I'm not that kind of a beastie, at all. Wrong guess, Guardy."

"Yet there's a gleam of the hunt about you. Is it, oh, is it, the Great
American Pumess that I have the honor to address?"

She made him a sweeping bow. "In a good cause."

"About which I shall doubtless hear to-morrow?"

"Don't I always