"I don't know that he can ever marry her; I don't know that she will ever see the charm in him that I see--he's the dearest boy and the best cousin in the world! But I think it's safe to say that he won't marry her right off, Prudy; certainly not before Easter," laughed Hester. "There are other reasons for not doing so besides canonical ones." "Yes; comical ones," amended Rob. "But only think of France, my playmate, with a wooer in serious earnest! I think it is fearful the way we are getting on in life." "Mrs. Silsby wouldn't think of letting Frances marry for ever so long," said Wythie, her colour mounting. "She is such a good, sensible mother! But I wish when the time does come Lester would have his way. He is right to choose Frances; she is as true and trusty and good as a girl can be. Wouldn't you like it, Hester?" "Yes; I like Frances, but I could find it in my heart to wish it were a Grey girl," said Hester. "Only there aren't enough to go around, and Lester stayed too long in Japan." "Fiddle-dedee!" remarked Rob. "Grey girls aren't going around--do you take us for tops, Hester?" "Yes; tip-tops," said Hester, scoring that time. Rob gave her a withering look of pretended reproach, and Prue said: "Who was that interesting young man whom your father introduced to me? That Mr. Stanhope?" "Is he interesting, Prudy? He has lots of interest, if that's what you mean," said Hester. "You have just said nearly all I know about him. He is Mr. Arthur Stanhope. I know a little more. He had a cautious and conservative father, who had a million to leave this boy, so he appointed my father his guardian, and left the money so that the son could use only the interest until he was thirty. Then he comes into his million, and in the meantime is not starving on its interest. Father says he is a good youth, not spoiled by his prospects, and I know that if he is it is largely owing to my father, who has been a faithful guardian, and has influenced this boy's tastes and aims. I don't know him particularly well myself, though he has been to the house a great deal; we never seemed to get on together.'" "I thought he was as nice as he could be," remarked Prue with her grown-up air, which made it trying to have Rob suggest quickly that none of us could be more than that, and to have the older girls laugh. "Oh, Rob, here comes Mr. Armstrong!" cried Wythie from her post at the window. "So early!" exclaimed Rob. "Yet we might have known that he wouldn't linger in Fayre for luncheon. And we were having such a heavenly, halcyon time! Prue, do get out my brown dress while I smooth this demented hair of mine!" Rob pulled out her pins and brushed her unruly locks into her hand, head downward, and with the brush, like the Red Queen's, in "Alice," in danger of getting lost, in the bright and beautiful rings of which Hester telegraphed to Wythie an admiration which Rob would have resented had it been audible.