"It's to be remembered, Miss Holbrook, that he came first; and I am quite satisfied that your father sought him here before you and your aunt came to Annandale. It seems to me the equity lies with your uncle--the creek as a hiding-place belongs to him by right of discovery." She smiled ready agreement to this, and I felt that she had come to win support for some plan of her own. She had never been more amiable; certainly she had never been lovelier. "You are quite right. We had all of us better go and leave him in peace. What is it he does there--runs a ferry or manages a boat-house?" "He is a canoe-maker," I said dryly, "with more than a local reputation." Her tone changed at once. "I'm glad; I'm very glad he has escaped from his old ways; for all our sakes," she added, with a little sigh. "And poor Rosalind! You may not know that he has a daughter. She is about a year younger than I. She must have had a sad time of it. I was named for her mother and she for mine. If you should meet her, Mr. Donovan, I wish you would tell her how sorry I am not to be able to see her. But Aunt Pat must not know that Uncle Arthur is here. I think she has tried to forget him, and her troubles with my father have effaced everything else. I hope you will manage that, for me; that Aunt Pat shall not know that Uncle Arthur and Rosalind are here. It could only distress her. It would be opening a book that she believes closed forever." Her solicitude for her aunt's peace of mind, spoken with eyes averted and in a low tone, lacked nothing. "I have seen your cousin," I said. "I saw her, in fact, this morning." "Rosalind? Then you can tell me whether--whether I am really so like her as they used to think!" "You _are_ rather like!" I replied lightly. "But I shall not attempt to tell you how. It would not do--it would involve particulars that might prove embarrassing. There are times when even I find discretion better than frankness." "You wish to save my feelings," she laughed. "But I am really taller!" "By an inch--she told me that!" "Then you have seen her more than once?" "Yes; more than twice even." "Then you must tell me wherein we are alike; I should really like to know." "I have told you I can't; it's beyond my poor powers. I will tell you this, though--" "Well?" "That I think you both delightful." "I am disappointed in you. I thought you a man of courage, Mr. Donovan." "Even brave men falter at the cannon's mouth!" "You are undoubtedly an Irishman, Mr. Donovan. I am sorry we shan't have any more tennis." "You have said so, Miss Holbrook, not I." She laughed, and then glanced toward the brown figure of Sister Margaret, and was silent for a moment, while the old clock on the stair boomed out the half-hour and was answered cheerily by the pretty tinkle of the chapel chime. I counted four poppy-leaves that fluttered free from a bowl on the book-shelf above her head and lazily fell to the floor at her feet.