But Galt, with a whoop, had both her hands in his, crying, rapturously: "Oh, you angel! You angel! Of course I am uncertain, and so I have taken the liberty! Oh, what a blessed little brick you are!" and on that hint he acted. So, on this twenty-fifth of June, many kisses had been exchanged, some piteously small gifts offered and joyously accepted. A few mixed roses, with very plenteous greens, were presented by the tremulous hand of John Lawton to his Letitia, but he had laid aside all the deep red ones, then made them into a knot, with thorns all carefully removed, and, as he kissed his first-born daughter on lip and brow and from his soul wished happy returns of the day, he laid them against her rounded throat, and said: "Because they are so like you, dear!" Later in the day Leslie Galt drove up in the dusty old station hack, carrying in one hand his mandolin and in the other a basket of the choicest, rarest fruits, prettily decorated with vines and blossoms. These being accepted, he next brought forth two slim parcels in white wrappers--but standing before Mrs. Lawton, and suddenly conscious that Sybil's laughing eyes were upon him, he blushed and stammered and lied his lie, so redly, so confusedly, that anyone would have sworn he told the truth, and did not know which girl to congratulate. And Mrs. Lawton clapped her hands in juvenile delight, and gave consent to Dorothy's acceptance of the gift. "She really had no right to, naughty thing!" And the boxes being opened revealed two little Empire fans: one a bit of scarlet gauze, gold flecked in sandal frame, and the other of cream-tinted silk, which some true artist's hand had showered thick with violets so heavenly blue, so mauve, so white, so real that involuntarily one bent to catch the perfume. No apportionment had been made at all, yet with a single blue gleam of an upward glancing eye, a swirl of color in a peachy cheek, Dorothy put out her hand unhesitatingly and claimed her own, thus proving that she knew herself to be the Violet Girl, and Sybil, fluttering her gay fan above her head, said, aside to Galt: "I suppose then, I am a sort of dahlia-girl or a--a--hibiscus-girl?" And he, being merry and light of heart because of that sweet, comprehending blue-eyed glance, caught up the mandolin and sang in answer: "My love is like the red, red rose!" At this Mrs. Lawton, speaking against a rather large portion of fruit which gave her words a somewhat muffled sound, remarked that "that used to be a very popular air in her own blooming days. She had been serenaded by it once; that is, those who serenaded her sang it; and a public singer--oh, mercy goodness!" coughed and choked the fruit-eater. Then, the unexpected pit having been ejected from her throat, she proceeded, with quite watery eyes--"A public singer, of no breeding at all, no offence meant to you, Sybil, though of course you will not be a singer--but she was stopping a few days next