"You only know from your own experience," demurred Hope. "All people haven't your habit of departing from the truth, you know." Then to Livingston: "Really, he can tell a terrible whopper with the straightest face imaginable! He only proves to you how well I know him. Last summer he told a girl a ridiculous story about snakes. It was her first visit at the ranch, and for several days I thought something was the matter with her brain. Every time she heard a grasshopper buzz anywhere near she would give a shriek and turn deathly pale. She finally told me that she feared rattlesnakes because Sydney had told her that that particular buzz was the snake's death rattle and that something or somebody was doomed for sure, that if the snake couldn't get the human victim it had set its eyes upon, it crept into a prairie-dog hole and got one of them. Of course that is only a sample of his very foolish yarns, which no one but an ignorant person would think of believing." "I remember," laughed Sydney. "That was that fair Lily Cresmond. She got up and had breakfast with me at six o'clock this morning. Poor girl! I'm afraid I've put my foot in it this time!" "For goodness' sake, did she propose to you?" asked Hope, aghast. "Not that I'm aware of!" answered Sydney. "No, it's worse than that. She asked me to tell her really and truly why _you_ weren't at home this summer. She crossed her heart, hoped to die she'd never breathe a word of it to a living, human creature, so I told her that it pained me to tell the sad story, but last season Freddie Rosehill had shown you such evident admiration that your father had become thoroughly alarmed and thought it best to keep you out of his way for the present. But I suggested that you might face paternal wrath and come back just for one look at the dear little boy." "Sydney, you never did!" gasped Hope. "_How could you?_" "Freddie came trotting out for his morning constitutional just as I was riding away," he continued, "and he waved his cane in the air and actually _ran_ down to the corral to say good-by. I really believe he liked me for once because I was leaving, and he very gingerly asked about you, and naturally was visibly relieved when I assured him that you would probably not be home while he was there. Talk about your joshers!" he said to Livingston. "Hope had the little Englishman so he didn't know his soul was his own! She'd take him out on the prairie and lose him, have him pop away for an hour at a stuffed chicken tied to the top of a tree, shoot bullets through his hat by mistake, and about a million other things too blood-curdling to mention. He didn't want to refuse my aunt's invitation to join the party at the ranch every summer, but his days and nights were spent in mortal terror of this dignified daughter of the house. And I must say there wasn't much love lost between them." "A brainless little fop!" commented Hope.