She was on her feet and across the lawn in a flash, to where the obese Stodger, prostrate upon a half-buried tree-root, was proclaiming to the heavens the sorrow of a sudden transition from the perpendicular to the horizontal. She comforted the child with whole-hearted tenderness, and after taking her turn in the game of croquet, returned to Hughie and sat down beside him again. "Well--what do you think of me?" she inquired suddenly. Hughie regarded her intently. "I don't know yet," he said. "I want to see a little more of you." "Most people," said Miss Gaymer with dignity, "make up their minds about me at once." "I won't do that," said Hughie. "It wouldn't be quite fair." Joan pondered this retort and finally flushed like a child. "That means that you have taken a dislike to me," she said. "I didn't mean it that way," said Hughie, much distressed,--"really!" "Anyhow, it means that you haven't made up your mind about me," persisted Joan. "That is true," admitted Hughie, who was no hand at fencing. "Well, do it soon," said Miss Gaymer. "I'm not accustomed to being put on trial. I may mention to you," she added complacently, "that I am considered a great success. Do you know what Jacky Penn told me?" "No; what?" inquired Hughie perfunctorily. He was beginning to understand the inwardness of Mildred Leroy's warning that the girl beside him had not yet found her feet. "He told me," said Joan, with an unaffected sigh of pleasure, "that the men here all call me 'The Toast.' What do you say to that?" "A Toast," said Hughie rather heavily, "is usually 'an excuse for a glass.' I shouldn't like to think of you merely as that, Joey." Miss Gaymer eyed her guardian with undisguised exasperation. "Hughie, you have got fearfully old-maidish in the last nine years," she said. "Where have you been? In any decent society?" "Sometimes; but not often. Not what _you_ would call decent society, Joey." "Well," remarked Miss Gaymer, turning her opponent's flank with characteristic readiness, "whatever it was, it wasn't very particular about clothes. Hughie, your get-up is perfectly _tragic_. If you are going to be my keeper you will have to begin by dressing decently. I don't know who your tailor is, but--Che-e-erub!" "What ho!" came from the croquet-lawn. "Come here, at once." Cherub obediently put down his mallet and approached. Having arrived, he halted and stood to attention. "Cherub," commanded Miss Gaymer, "turn round and round till I tell you to stop, and let Mr. Marrable see your clothes." Much flattered, Cherub rotated serenely on his axis for the benefit of the untutored Marrable, while Miss Gaymer ran over his points. "Must I have a waist?" inquired Hughie meekly. "Yes--if you've _got_ one," replied Joan, surveying her guardian's amorphous shooting-jacket doubtfully. "And purple socks?" "Green will do, old man," remarked the _mannequin_ unexpectedly.