"No, thank you," she said, nervously, "I am quite accustomed to it you see, and----" But all further remonstrance was cut short by Mr. Valchester's decisive action. He took the child gently but firmly from her arms and walked up the slope with it, for "all the world," as Violet rather acidly remarked to her brother, "like a country booby going to meeting with his wife and child." "Val, I only wish that Millard could get a glimpse of you now!" called out Walter, laughing. "Who is Millard?" Violet queried. "Oh! one of our class-mates--an artist of no mean merit either. How delightfully he would caricature Valchester's appearance now." Valchester did not seem disturbed by the playful hit. He sat Dollie down in the long grass and filled her fat little hands with pink-and-white clover heads. Jaquelina sat down beside her, apprehensive that she would cram the blossoms into her ever-open mouth and choke herself. "And you will spend the two hundred dollars reward you will receive for the capture of the outlaw chief on your education, Miss Lina?" said Walter, resuming the conversation where it had been interrupted by the curt summons of Dollie's mother. "Yes," Jaquelina answered, simply. "And then?" said Walter Earle. "Then," she answered hopefully, and a little eagerly, "I hope I shall leave the farm and earn my own living somewhere. I am ambitious of becoming a governess." "A vaulting ambition," said Violet, with a light laugh. "Not very," said Lina, with a gentle innocence and gravity that checked Violet's delicate sarcasm. "It will be better than the farm, that is all." "Mr. Valchester, here is a four-leaved clover for you," said Violet. "Take it and keep it. It may bring you good luck." "Thank you," he said, and took it carelessly and held it between his long, white fingers. A little later, when no one was looking, he shut it inside the leaves of Jaquelina's book. "You have given the clover to one who could not appreciate good luck if it came to him," laughed Walter. "Valchester has known nothing else all his life. He is fortune's favorite." "I think you are, too, Mr. Earle--you and Violet," Jaquelina said, gently. A faint sigh quivered over her lips as she spoke. She looked at these three in their costly apparel and with their bright, happy faces, and it seemed to her as if they belonged to quite a different world from her own. They were fortune's favorites, all of them. "Thank you," said Walter, smiling, "I hope the fickle goddess will always be kind to me." Then Violet rose, shaking out the apple blossoms that had fallen into the folds of her dress, and declared it was time to go. "We came to ask you to go boating with us," said Walter, "but I suppose," with anything but a loving glance at innocent Dollie, "it would be no use." Jaquelina's eyes brightened, then saddened again almost pathetically. "No, for Aunt Meredith has gone away," she said. "I could not go to-day."