"Are you in love with her--yet?" asked Hezekiah, carelessly, tossing a pebble into the lake. The "yet" was so timed that it splashed with the pebble. "No; not--yet," I replied. "It will come," said Hezekiah a little ruefully, casting a pebble farther upon the crinkled water. "You mean, Hezekiah, that men always fall in love with your sister." She nodded. "Well, she's a good deal of a girl." "Beautiful and no end cultivated. They all go crazy about her." "You mean Hartley Wiggins and his fellow-bandits at the Prescott Arms." "Yes; and lots of others." "And sometimes, Hezekiah, it has seemed to you that she got all the admiration, and that you did n't get your share. So when her suitors began a siege of the castle whose gates were locked against you, you plugged the chimney with a trunk-tray, and played at being ghost and otherwise sought to terrify your sister's lovers." "That's not nice, Chimneys. You mean that I'm jealous." "No. I don't mean that you are jealous now: I throw it into the remote and irrevocable past. You were jealous. You don't care so much now. And I hope you will care less!" "That is being impertinent. If you talk that way I shall call you Mr. Ames and go home!" "You can't do that, Hezekiah." "I should like to know why not? If you say I 'm jealous of Cecilia now, or that I ever was, I shall be very, very angry. For it's not true." "No. You see things very differently now. You told me only last night that Cecilia might have Hartley Wiggins. Assuming that she wants him! And you and he have been good friends, have n't you? You had good times on the other side. And while Cecilia was in town assisting Providence in finding your aunt a cook, you went walking with him." "I did, I did!" mocked Hezekiah. "And why do you suppose I did?" "Because Wiggy's the best of fellows; a solid, substantial citizen, who raises wheat to make bread out of." "And angel food and ginger cookies," added Hezekiah, feeling absently in the pockets of her coat. "No, Chimneys, you 're a nice boy and you don't yell like a wild man when a feather-duster hits you in the dark; but there are some things you don't know yet." "I am here to grow wise at the feet of Hezekiah, Daughter of Kings. Open the book of wisdom and teach me the alphabet, but don't be sad if I balk at the grammar." "I never knew all the alphabet myself," said Hezekiah dolefully; then she laughed abruptly. "I was bounced from two convents and no end of Hudson River and Fifth Avenue education shops." "The brutality of that, Hezekiah, wrings my heart! Yet you are the best teacher I ever had, and I thought I was educated when I met you. But I had only been to school, which is different. Not until the first time our eyes met, not until that supreme moment"--