"Oh, no!" she answered. "It's just a fancy that persists in coming
and going. You know, Uncle Lee," Anne pursued, confidentially,
"I've always had rather a high ideal of marriage. I've always said
that the man I would marry must be a big man--oh, I don't mean
only physically! I mean morally, mentally--a man among men!"

"And you think young Lloyd--answers that description, eh?"

"I think he does, Uncle Lee," she answered seriously. And
immediately afterward she got to her feet, saying brightly, "Well!
we mustn't take this too gravely--yet. It was only that I wanted
to be open and above-board with you, Uncle, from the beginning.
That's the only honest way."

"That's wise and right!" her uncle answered, in the kindly, absent
tone he had used to them as children, a tone he was apt to use to
Anne when she was in her highest mood, and one she rather
resented.

"Cherry, now--" he asked, detaining her for a moment. "She--you
don't think that perhaps Peter admires her?"

"PETER!" Anne echoed amazedly, and stood thinking.

Peter was more than thirty years old, thin, scholarly, something
of a solitary, the sweet, dreamy, affectionate neighbour who had
shared the girls' lives for the past ten years. Cherry had bullied
Peter since her babyhood, ruined his piano with sticky fingers,
trampled his rose-beds, coaxed him into asking her father to let