“Tom Hinton, you must be crazy! The idea of picking me out, when I was only fourteen years old, for your wife! Well, I like your impudence!” she ejaculated. “I am glad you like it. I thought you would,” he answered, falling into her mood of wicked banter. “Well, what do you say, my darling? Will you marry me?” tenderly. “Not to save your life, Tom Hinton!” answered she, heartlessly, darting away. CHAPTER XXV. Thea West, for such was the pretty name the young girl had made out of her pet name Sweetheart, bounced into the house and flung herself down at the piano, leaving her discomfited lover alone on the porch of his cottage home. In a minute a flood of music poured out through the open windows, and the girl sung sweetly, saucily, cruelly: “The Laird of Cockpen, he’s proud an’ his great. His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the state; He wanted a wife his braw house to keep, But favor wi’ wooin’ was fashions to seek. * * * * * “He took the gray mare and rode cannilie-- And rapped at the door o’ Clarverse-ha’ Lee, ’Gae tell Mistress Jean to come speedily ben; She’s wanted to speak wi’ the Laird o’ Cockpen.’ “Mistress Jean, she was making the elder-flower wine; ‘An’ what brings the laird at sic a like time?’ She put aff her apron and on her silk gown, Her mutch wi’ red ribbons, and gaed awa’ down. “And when she cam’ ben he bowed full low; And what was his errand he soon let her know. Amazed was the laird when the lady said ‘Na,’ And wi’ a light curtsey she turned awa’. “Dumfoundered he was, but nae sigh did he gi’e; He mounted his mare and rode cannilie; And after he thought, as he gaed through the glen: ‘She’s daft to refuse the Laird of Cockpen!’” The pert song was followed by a brilliant waltz, a march, a sonata, then some sentimental songs. Evidently, Thea West was in the highest spirits. No sympathy did the rejected suitor get from his heartless lady-love. She had forgotten him long before he turned away from the sound of her maddening melody and went back from his suburban home to the chief dry-goods store in the village, where he was employed as clerk, and where so many pretty faces smiled daily on the good-looking, well-dressed young man that he could not help knowing that he was a favorite beau--a knowledge that made Thea West’s _insouciant_ scorn sting even more bitterly.