"Hold on," she called. "Wait a minute," and she drew up beside me. "Hello, Lucy," she said in her familiar, breezy way. "Now isn't this luck?" Her dark, crisp hair was neat and firm beneath the little black derby--an affectation in dress that no one wears riding in Hilton except Edith Campbell. She didn't have them on to-day, but usually she wears long green drop-earrings, screwed on, I think--too New Yorky for anything. "Wait a jiffy," she laughed, "and I'll walk along with you. Pierre here, can mosey along behind." She sprang down from her saddle like a sporty horse-woman, came up and thrust out a gauntlet-gloved hand to me. She gave me a Hercules grip. "Has Al told you?" she asked, plunging straight ahead, with no delicacy. "Yes, he has," I stammered, "and--I congratulate you both," I finished desperately. It did sound stiff and formal and schoolgirlish, but I was angry with Edith Campbell when she laughed at me and exclaimed, "You funny old-fashioned child!" She arranged one pair of reins over her horse's neck and used the other pair for a lead, slipping her arm through the loop. "Come on now, let's walk," she said and put her free arm through mine, a familiarity from the wonderful Edith Campbell for which even sensible Juliet would envy me. _I_ wanted to edge away from her. "Alec," she went on, "thinks the world and all of you, Bobbie," (as if she had to inform me!) "and I want you to know right off, you won't be losing a brother, simply gaining a sister." (Usual, meaningless words! As if Ruth wasn't more than enough anyhow.) "And another thing," she ploughed ahead, "there will always be a room in our house for Bobbie. One of the things I told Alec was that he must look out for his sisters." "Alec would do that anyway," I said. "Of course. Nice old Al! He's as good as gold." I couldn't bear her patronising manner. She has always treated Alec like that, just because she had money and he had nothing but goodness. I turned to her seriously. "Miss Campbell," I asked, "how did you come to want to marry Alec?" "You amusing chicken!" she laughed, then pinching me disgustingly on the arm, she added in a sly way, "You wait, you'll know when the right one comes." I flushed but held my peace. "I was only wondering," I said. "Alec has so little money, and you--I mean our business--our success is so uncertain." "Alec is bound to succeed _now_," she replied in her cock-sure way. "I told Al there was no such word in my vocabulary as failure. Besides _Father_ is going to look into the business, and Father never touched a thing that wasn't successful." "Your father!" I gasped with the colour again in my face. Her father used to collect junk-iron. "Our business!" "Oh, come, come. Just like Al at first. This Vars pride! Don't you see, my dear, that, independent of weddings, a man can put a little life into a dead business if he wants to?" "My father's business isn't dead," I exclaimed, now filled with indignation. "Oh, come, Bobbikins!"