"Don't let her guide you, Sir Anthony. I'll tell you a story about her. She was always tantalising Mick St. Leger, an old pupil of papa's, who is in India now, with stories of a wonderful pike which inhabited one of the big holes in the Moyle. Well, poor Mick used to sit and fish for hours, now and then catching a little fish by accident, for his heart wasn't in it for thinking of Sylvia's big pike. And Sylvia used to sit by watching him, apparently full of sympathy. One day he was fishing the big hole as usual, when he gave a long whistle. 'What is it, Mick?' Sylvia cried, running to him. 'It feels like a twenty-pounder,' said poor Mick, very red in the face. 'Oh, Mick, do let me help!' cried Sylvia. And then, with an immense deal of carefulness, and poor Mick holding on like grim death, they reeled up an old tin can full of stones, in the handle of which Mick's line was caught." "Mick would never have known," said Sylvia dispassionately, "if little Patsy Murray hadn't come running after me a week later, calling out, 'Where's that apple ye promised me for sinkin' me mother's ould can in the river?' Mick never believed in me as an honest angler afterwards." "No wonder! But to think your father should have suggested you as my guide, Miss Sylvia!" "Pam's just as bad, Sir Anthony. I generally do the things, but Pam encourages me." Pamela again turned those eyes of heaven's own colour in mute reproach upon her sister. "I'll have faith in you, Miss Pam," said Sir Anthony impulsively, "no matter what your sister says to the contrary." And he meant his rash promise. [Illustration: "The letter can wait till another time."--_p._ 109.] CHAPTER V. THE WISHING WELL. "My friends generally call me Tony," said a voice, the youthful growl of which was subdued to all possible softness. "We have known each other such a little while," replied Pamela, looking down at the ground, which had begun to cover itself in the flying gold of the autumn woods. "As the calendar counts; but we--'we count time by heart-throbs'--doesn't somebody say that?" A colour, like a pink rose-leaf, warmed in Pamela's clear cheek. "We have become very good friends," she said, "seeing that it is only six--or is it seven?--weeks ago since we met." "It is eight," said the youth. "I came in mid-July, and now it is mid-September. But it sometimes seems to me that I have always been here, and that my life elsewhere was but a dream." [Illustration: "Tell me what you wished for?"] "If that were so," she said demurely--and for a moment the violet eyes looked up at him under their shadow of night--"if that were so, then I might really call you by your name, Sir Anthony. But it is too soon." "Then you will one day, Miss Pamela? How many days must go by first? You called that other man--St. Leger--by his name. It is 'Mick' with all of you." "Ah," said Pamela, again with the bewildering glance; "but Mick was Mick, you see."