"It would surely be a famous prank, Rocelia," said the one who was lounging upon her elbows. "I cannot understand why you should oppose me. Are we not come to an age, my over-discreet cousin, where a champion should be ours by right?" "By right of what, pray, madcap Isabel?" queried Rocelia, laying aside her needlework upon a table that stood near the couch. "Why--by right of conquest, little dunce," returned Isabel with a gay laugh. "Here does my stern guardian--and by the same token your implacable father--see fit to keep us mewed within this dismal, fly-by-night prison, deprived of every pleasure and innocent pastime that other maids, similarly stationed, are permitted to enjoy. I tell you, sweet Rocelia, 'tis nothing less than downright cruel." "Say not so, ungracious maid," observed Rocelia in mild disapproval. "Are we not surrounded with everything, my dear, that heart of maid could wish?" "Everything, say you? Why--far, far from everything," demurred Isabel, tossing back a strand of raven black hair that persisted in straying over her shoulder. "A champion! Give to me a champion!" she cried with a mock seriousness, raising on high her right arm, from which her loose robe fell, displaying a dazzling array of captivating curves and dimples. Rocelia smiled in a gentle toleration of the other's extravagance of manner. "Your wondrous beauty, my dear cousin," she said, "will win for you a champion all in good time." "Time?" retorted Isabel, gathering her lips in a pretty pout and arching her brows. "Time, say you? And what, I pray you, have _we_ to do with time? Does not time fade and wither that beauty by which, but a moment ago, you have recommended to me a champion? Is not time our mortal and deadly foe?" "Too much of it, mayhap, would be," admitted Rocelia; "but a little of it should serve well in rounding out our minds, and in providing us with that sane discretion which, as you remember, Lord Bishop Kennedy, our kind tutor, has taught us is the most precious of earthly perquisites." "Bah! a murrain upon Bishop Kennedy and his dry pedantries. An I had that old prate-apace inside an oven, right well would I warm his icy blood for him. Look not upon me, sweet coz, with such wideopen eyes of ravished virtue! I declare to you, Rocelia, I'll have me a champion--and before this very night is over. You could never divine, I'm sure, why I begged you awhile ago to sing without yon open window. Of a truth, you knew not, or your voice would never have left your throat. It was vicariously to beguile my brave champion's ears that you were singing so sweetly, dear. He was then outside with your father and Zenas burying the hound. Ah! you should have seen him fell the savage brute, Rocelia. A single mighty blow of his mailed fist and 'twas all over." "Were you not afraid? 'Twould have fared ill with you, an Father had seen you standing at the tap-room door."