showed Peter Cherry's old exercise books: "Look, Peter, how she
put faces in the naughts and turned the sevens into little sail-
boats! And see the straggling letters--'Charity Strickland!' I've
always hated to destroy them. She was such a lazy, cunning little
scholar!"

Peter, smiling at the old books, had remembered her, a small,
square Cherry, with a film of gold falling over a blazing cheek,
and mutinous blue eyes. Ah--the wonderful eyes were wonderful even
then--

The date gave him a moment's shock. Only eight--only seven years
ago she had been a schoolgirl! Cherry was not yet twenty-three--

"I wish she had married a little differently," Alix said,
thoughtfully. "Cherry isn't exacting. But she does like pretty
gowns and pretty rooms, and to do things as other girls do!"

"You should have married the mining engineer," he told her. "Red
Creek would have had no terrors for you!

"I should have loved it!" she agreed, carelessly.

A curious expression flashed into her face. She was smiling; but
immediately the smile faded, and she looked back at the fire with
puzzled eyes.

"If I loved a man, Peter, the place and the house and the money
wouldn't matter much!" she answered after awhile, in a slightly
strained voice.