"No, Gerald," she replied promptly, but with gentleness and regret, so as not to hurt his feelings. "I might come and live with you," she added, after a second, "and keep house for you. A cottage in the country, with beehives and ducks and a little donkey.... Gerald, do you know about Sir William Wallace?" Though a chasm appeared to divide this subject from the last, Gerald shrewdly supposed a connection between them. "Very little. You tell me." "You haven't read 'The Scottish Chiefs'? I took it without permission and kept it out of Fräulein's sight. It grows light early now, you know, and I read it for hours before getting up. Then whenever I could, I read it in the daytime. And after they had left me at night, I read it with the pink candles of my birthday cake. I cried so much that when I finished I was ill with a fever and had to be kept in bed for three days." "Why, when was this?" "Two weeks ago." "My poor little Lily, how came I not to be told of it? And you sent me such a beautiful remembrance when I was ill!--Well, Lily, I know now why you won't take me. I'm not much like Sir William Wallace, that's a fact. I might grow like him in courage and prowess, perhaps, to please you, but I know that I should never be beautiful in kilts. It shall be as you say, dear. We'll be brother and sister instead. And now tell me more about this book, these Scottish.... Lily, do you see Mrs. Hawthorne on the doorstep? Do you gather that the signs she is making are meant for us? We came up together and I think she may wish to say she is ready to go, and will give me a lift back to town...." * * * * * "We came up together!" With great frequency in these days Gerald was going somewhere with Mrs. Hawthorne, not alone with her, but making one of four in an amiable party. Sometimes it was his fate to make conversation by the hour with Estelle, while Doctor Tom monopolized Aurora; on the other hand, he sometimes would succeed in getting his fingers among Occasion's hair, and secure Aurora for his share, while Dr. Tom was apportioned with the slenderer charmer. But the behavior of all was civilized and urbane, and if a thorn pricked or nettle burned, the sufferer concealed his pain and spoiled nobody's fun. Gerald would in reality have preferred to stay away, almost as much as Estelle and possibly Doctor Tom would have preferred him to do so. But just there the incalculable, the ungovernable, in human nature came into play. A golden thread, a mere hair, strong as a steel cable, drew him to the place where he could expect to find no comfort, and had no object to accomplish except just to be there, with his eyebrows one higher than the other. Either Estelle liked to annoy him, or she was unfortunate in doing it without malice. "Don't they make a noble-looking couple?" she asked him, gazing at Aurora and Tom outlined side by side against the light of the window.