when on a certain Sunday morning, while softly laying bloom against
bloom, her eyes had now and again met the eyes of the Candy Man. There
were other callers, other tea drinkers, but to none did Mr. McAllister
surrender his place of vantage.

"If she keeps on like this, Augustus is hers--if she wants him,"
Mr. Gerrard Pennington remarked to his wife later in the evening.

"If I could have her all to myself," Mrs. Pennington sighed; "but any
impression I may make is neutralised by her association with those
Vandegrifts. It is an absurd arrangement, spending half her time down
there."

"I think you are rather in the lead, aren't you, my dear?"

Mrs. Pennington shrugged her shoulders, but there was some triumph in
her smile. "She is a dear child, in spite of some absurd notions, and
I long to see her well and safely settled. I don't quite know in what
her charm most lies, but she has it."

"Oh, it's her youth, and the conviction that it is all so jolly well
worth while. She is so keen about everything." There was an odd twinkle
in Mr. Pennington's eyes, usually so piercing beneath their bushy grey
brows. Margaret Elizabeth called him Uncle Gerry. It was amusing. He
liked it, and enjoyed playing the part of Uncle Gerry. "Of course she's
bound to get over that. Still, I shouldn't be in any haste to settle
her."

His wife thought of her brother, the Professor of Archæology, now in
the Far East. "It is queer, but Dick never has," she said, answering