"Modern boarders," he explained politely, "are unpleasant people who come from the city to enjoy the country, and who, having no real homes, pay farmers to lodge and feed them for a few days of vacation and dyspepsia." "You mean is this a tavern?" she asked, unsmiling. "No, I don't. I mean, will you let me live here a little while as though I were a guest, and then permit me to settle my reckoning in accordance with your own views upon the subject?" She hesitated as though perplexed. "Suppose you ask your father or mother," he suggested. "They are absent." "Will they return this morning?" "I don't know exactly when they expect to return." "Well, couldn't you assume the responsibility?" he asked, smiling. She looked at him for a few moments, and it seemed to him as though, in the fearless gravity of her regard, somehow, somewhere, perhaps in the curled corners of her lips, perhaps in her pretty and unusual eyes, there lurked a little demon of laughter. Yet it could not be so; there were only serenity and a child's direct sweetness in the gaze. "What is your name?" she asked. "John Brown 4th." "Mine is Elizabeth Tennant. Where do you live?" "In--New York," he admitted, watching her furtively. "I was there once--at a ball--many years ago," she observed. "Not _very_ many years ago, I imagine," he said, smiling at her youthful reminiscence. "Many, many years ago," she said thoughtfully. "I shall go again some day." "Of course," he murmured politely, "it's a thing to do and get done--like going abroad." She looked up at him quickly. "Years ago I knew a boy--with your easy humour and your trick of speech. He resembled you otherwise; and he wore your name becomingly." He tried to recall knowing her in his extreme youth, but made no definite connection. "You wouldn't remember," she said gravely; "but I think I know you now. Who is your father?" "My father?" he repeated, surprised and smiling. "My father is John Brown 3rd." "And his father?" "My grandfather?" he asked, very much amused. "Oh, he was John Brown 2nd. And _his_ father was Captain John Brown of Westchester; but I don't want to talk D. A. R. talk to you about my great grandfather----" "He fought at Pound Ridge," said the girl, slowly. "Yes," said Brown, astonished. "Tarleton's cavalry--the brutal hussars of the legion--killed him on the Stamford Road," she said; "and he lay there in the field all day with one dead arm over his face and his broken pistol in his hand, and the terrible galloping fight drove past down the stony New Canaan road--and the smoke from the meeting house afire rolled blacker and blacker and redder and redder----" With a quickly drawn breath she covered her face with both hands and stood a moment silent; and Brown stared at her, astonished, doubting his eyes and ears. The next moment she dropped her hands and looked at him with a tremulous smile.