“She spent a week with me while you were away,” Mrs. Lightfoot went on in an unchanged voice, though with a softened face, “and, I declare, she kept house as well as I could have done it myself, and Cupid says she washed the pink teaset every morning with her own hands, and she actually cured Rhody's lameness with a liniment she made out of Jimson weed. I tell you now, Mr. Lightfoot, that, if I get sick, Betty Ambler is the only girl I'm going to have inside the house.” “Very well, my dear,” said the Major, meekly, “I'll try to remember; and, in that case, I reckon we'd as well drop a hint to Dan, eh, Molly?” Mrs. Lightfoot looked at him a moment in silence. Then she said “Humph!” beneath her breath, and took up her knitting from the little table at her side. But Dan was living fast at college, and the Major's hints were thrown away. He read of “the Ambler girls who are growing into real beauties,” and he skipped the part that said, “Your grandmother has taken a great fancy to Betty and enjoys having her about.” “Here's something for you, Champe,” he remarked with a laugh, as he tossed the letter upon the table. “Gather your beauties while you may, for I prefer bull pups. Did Batt Horsford tell you I'd offered him twenty-five dollars for that one of his?” Champe picked up the letter and unfolded it slowly. He was a tall, slender young fellow, with curling pale brown hair and fine straight features. His face, in the strong light of the window by which he stood, showed a tracery of blue veins across the high forehead. “Oh, shut up about bull pups,” he said irritably. “You are as bad as a breeder, and yet you couldn't tell that thoroughbred of John Morson's from a cross with a terrier.” “You bet I couldn't,” cried Dan, firing up; but Champe was reading the letter, and a faint flush had risen to his face. “The girl is like a spray of golden-rod in the sunshine,” wrote the Major, with his old-fashioned rhetoric. “What is it he says, eh?” asked Dan, noting the flush and drawing his conclusions. “He says that Aunt Molly and himself will meet us at the White Sulphur next summer.” “Oh, I don't mean that. What is it he says about the girls; they are real beauties aren't they? By the way, Champe, why don't you marry one of them and settle down?” “Why don't you?” retorted Champe, as Dan got up and called to Big Abel to bring his riding clothes. “Oh, I'm not a lady's man,” he said lightly. “I've too moody a face for them,” and he began to dress himself with the elaborate care which had won for him the title of “Beau” Montjoy.