She was busy; she was holding a lamp above her head, and looking at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. Her hair was down, tumbling in a shining mass over her shoulders, her eyes were like stars, her cheeks rose-red. She was turning her white neck from side to side, throwing her head backward, looking at herself through half-shut eyes; her mouth was scarlet. "Blair is in love with me!" she said to herself. She felt his last kiss still on her mouth; she felt it until it seemed as if her lip bled. "David Richie needn't talk about 'little girls' any more. _I'm engaged!_" She put the lamp down on the mantelpiece, shook her mane of hair back over her bare shoulders, and then, her hands on her hips, her short petticoat ruffling about her knees, she began to dance. "Somebody is in love with me! "'Oh, isn't it joyful, joyful, joyful--'" [Illustration: "BLAIR IS IN LOVE WITH ME!"] CHAPTER VI When the company had gone,--"I thought they never _would_ go!" Nannie said--she rushed at her brother. "Blair!" The boy flung up his head proudly. "She told you, did she?" "You're engaged!" cried Nannie, ecstatically. Blair started. "Why!" he said. "So I am! I never thought of it." And when he got his breath, the radiant darkness of his eyes sparkled into laughter. "Yes, _I'm engaged!_" He put his hands into his pockets and strutted the length of the room; a minute later he stopped beside the piano and struck a triumphant chord; then he sat down and began to play uproariously, singing to a crashing accompaniment: "'... lived a miner, a forty-niner, With his daughter Clementine! Oh my darling, oh my _darling_--'" --the riotous, beautiful voice rang on, the sound overflowing through the long rooms, across the hall, even into the dining-room. Harris, wiping dishes in the pantry, stopped, tea-towel in hand, and listened; Sarah Maitland, at her desk, lifted her head, and the pen slipped from her fingers. Blair, spinning around on the piano-stool, caught his sister about her waist in a hug that made her squeak. Then they both shrieked with laughter. "But Blair!" Nannie said, getting her breath; "shall you tell Mamma to-night?" Blair's face dropped. "I guess I won't tell anybody yet," he faltered; "oh, that awful dinner!" As the mortification of an hour ago surged back upon him, he added to the fear of telling his mother a resentment that would retaliate by secrecy. "I won't tell her at all," he decided; "and don't you, either." "I!" said Nannie. "Well, I should think not. Gracious!" But though Blair did not tell his mother, he could not keep the great news to himself; he saw David the next afternoon, and overflowed. David took it with a gasp of silence, as if he had been suddenly hit below the belt; then in a low voice he said, "You--_kissed_ her. Did she kiss you?"