Daisy dimpled with devilment as she obeyed this refreshingly familiar instruction; and, accentuating her figure-lines as she walked, for the especial benefit of the furtively-watching couple, she led the way to where Tim Davitt, the Wares' chauffeur, waited outside the depot with the limousine. "What's this?" demanded Lovina Nixon, surveying the vehicle, "a livery rig?" "Yes, mother," said Daisy, smiling aside at the chauffeur, as Davitt, touching his hat, held the door open. The mother, knocking her bonnet askew against the top of the car, blundered to the farther end of a seat. John Nixon lumbered in after her. Then Daisy, after a low-toned "Home, Timmy," hopped in and snuggled mischievously against her stepfather, who was in the centre of the seat. "Don't ye be 'fraid," he leaned over and whispered, not unkindly, in her ear, "I'll not let yur Moh whup ye." Turning street-corners smoothly and swiftly, the limousine soon reached the home grounds and was brought by Tim Davitt, deftest of chauffeurs, to a soft gliding halt before the long front veranda of the Ware house. "Is this an expensive boardin'-place?" Lovina Nixon enquired, as she and her husband followed Daisy up the steps. "Oh--not very," Daisy answered, as she swung open the door and ushered her parents into the quietly furnished hall, with its deep, soft rugs, polished floor, and walnut hat-rack. A door on the right led into the library; and through this Daisy, after depositing the mother's valise in the hall, led the fumbling man and woman. The room was empty, as Lady Frances was in the kitchen, overseeing, after her thrifty fashion, the supper preparations, and Sir William was not yet home from the office. "Queer kind of a hotel." Lovina Nixon's eyes followed her daughter suspiciously, as Daisy went to the centre-table and opened a massive volume with brass binding and buckle. "Come on, mother, and register!" said the girl then, with a queer expression; pointing down to the opened page, and regarding the sharp-nosed ill-expectant woman with eyes that were bright and flashing as live fire. Lovina Nixon advanced; felt for her glasses; put them on; bent over; and, in the big family Bible that Daisy had laid open, read the record of the marriage of her daughter to Sir William Ware, Baronet. CHAPTER XIX. THE CHOICE OF THE DRAY. Sir William sat in the drawing-room, playing the host to John Nixon.