"Laugh if you like," she said bitterly. "I looked in the mirror. I know all about it." "Run along," he said, "but don't be gone long, will you? Can you trust me with the cherries?" Connie walked into the house with great decorum, afraid the ragged skirts might swing revealingly, but the young man bent over the cherries while she made her escape. It was another Connie who appeared a little later, a typical tennis girl, all in white from the velvet band in her hair to the canvas shoes on her dainty feet. She held out the slender hand, no longer grimy and stained, but its whiteness still marred with sorry scratches. "I am glad to see you," she said gracefully, "though I can only pray you won't carry a mental picture of me very long." "I'm afraid I will though," he said teasingly. "Then please don't paint me verbally for my sisters' ears; they are always so clever where I am concerned. It is too bad they are out. You'll stay for luncheon with me, won't you? I'm all alone,--we'll have it in the yard." "It sounds very tempting, but--perhaps I had better come again later in the afternoon." "You may do that, too," said Connie. "But since you are here, I'm afraid I must insist that you help amuse me." And she added ruefully, "Since I have done so well amusing you this morning." "Why, he's just like anybody else," she was thinking with relief. "It's no trouble to talk to him, at all. He's nice in spite of the millions. Prudence says millionaires aren't half so dollar-marked as they are cartooned, anyhow." He stayed for luncheon, he even helped carry the folding table out beneath the cherry tree, and trotted docilely back and forth with plates and glasses, as Connie decreed. "Oh, father," she chuckled to herself, as she stood at the kitchen window, twinkling at the sight of the millionaire's son spreading sandwiches according to her instructions. "Oh, father, the boy question is complicated, sure enough." It was not until they were at luncheon that the grand idea visited Connie. Carol would have offered it harborage long before. Carol's mind worked best along that very line. It came to Connie slowly, but she gave it royal welcome. Back to her remembrance flashed the thousand witty sallies of Carol and Lark, the hundreds of times she had suffered at their hands. And for the first time in her life, she saw a clear way of getting even. And a millionaire's son! Never was such a revenge fairly crying to be perpetrated. "Will you do something for me, Mr. Hedges?" she asked. Connie was only sixteen, but something that is born in woman told her to lower her eyes shyly, and then look up at him quickly beneath her lashes. She was no flirt, but she believed in utilizing her resources. And she saw in a flash that the ruse worked. Then she told him softly, very prettily. "But won't she dislike me if I do?" he asked. "No, she won't," said Connie. "We're a family of good laughers. We enjoy a joke nearly as much when it's on us, as when we are on top."