"I think he does, Uncle Lee," she answered seriously. And immediately afterward she got to her feet, saying brightly, "Well! we mustn't take this too gravely--yet. It was only that I wanted to be open and above-board with you, Uncle, from the beginning. That's the only honest way." "That's wise and right!" her uncle answered, in the kindly, absent tone he had used to them as children, a tone he was apt to use to Anne when she was in her highest mood, and one she rather resented. "Cherry, now--" he asked, detaining her for a moment. "She--you don't think that perhaps Peter admires her?" "PETER!" Anne echoed amazedly, and stood thinking. Peter was more than thirty years old, thin, scholarly, something of a solitary, the sweet, dreamy, affectionate neighbour who had shared the girls' lives for the past ten years. Cherry had bullied Peter since her babyhood, ruined his piano with sticky fingers, trampled his rose-beds, coaxed him into asking her father to let her sit up for dinner. For some reason she could not, or would not, define, Anne liked the idea of Cherry and Peter falling in love-- "Somehow one doesn't think of Peter as marrying any one--" she said slowly, still trying to grasp the thought. "He's so--self-sufficient," she added, shaking her head. "You--you WOULDN'T like that, Uncle?" "Peter is a dear fellow," the doctor mused. "But Cherry--why, she's barely eighteen! He--" The old man hesitated, began again: "I suppose there's no reason why Peter shouldn't kiss her, in a--brotherly sort of way?" he submitted doubtfully. "Did he kiss her?" Anne exclaimed. "I don't know that he did," Cherry's father said hastily. "But what made you think he did?" the girl persisted. "Just a fancy," he assured her. "Just an old father's fear that she is growing up too fast!" "Because we all, and you especially, spoil her," Anne reminded him, smiling. "Peter," she added thoughtfully, "has kissed us all, now and then!" She stooped for a dutiful good-night kiss, and was gone. And as she went, lightly and swiftly across the hall, up the stairway with her shoulders erect, and methodically and prettily moved about her brushing and folding and disrobing, she saw herself engaged to be married, saw herself veiled and mystical in white, on her Uncle's arm, heard the old neighbours and friends saying that little Anne Strickland had gone to her own home, and had won the love of a fine man. Downstairs, the doctor sat on, thinking, and his face was grave. He was thinking of little Cherry's goodnight kiss, half an hour ago. She had rested against his arm, and he had held her there, but what had been the thoughts behind the blue eyes so near his own? Perhaps Anne was right--perhaps Anne was right. But he realized with a great rush of fear that some man had kissed Cherry to-night, had held her against a tobacco-scented coat, and that the girl was a woman, and an awakened woman at that. Cherry--kissed a man! Her father's heart winced away from the thought.