Why, it seems only the other day that I saw you in a short frock,
bowling a hoop."

"A tom-boy occupation," laughed Doris. "But dad encouraged that and
skipping, as the best possible means of exercise."

"He was right. Look how straight and svelte you are! Few, if any, among
our community can have watched your progress to womanhood as closely as
I. You see, living opposite, as I do, I kept track of you more
intimately than your other neighbors."

Siddle was trimming his sails cleverly. The concluding sentence robbed
his earlier comments of their sentimental import.

"If we live long enough we may even see each other in the sere and yellow
leaf," said Doris flippantly.

"I would ask no greater happiness," came the quiet reply, and Doris could
have bitten her tongue for according him that unguarded opening. Suddenly
availing herself of the advice which the detective, like Hamlet, had
given to the players, she gazed musingly at the fair panorama of The
Hollies and its gardens, with the two young men seated on the lawn. By
this time Minnie was staging tea, and the picture looked idyllic enough.
Doris saw, out of the tail of her eye, that her companion was watching
her furtively, though apparently absorbed in the scene. He moistened his
thin lips with his tongue.

"As a study in contrasts, that would be hard to beat," he said, after a
long pause.