demurely. "Wasn't Cherry a good substitute?"

"Cherry's adorable!" he agreed heartily.

"Isn't she sweet?" Anne asked enthusiastically. "She's only a
little girl, really, but she's a little girl who is going to have
a lot of attention some day!" she added, in her most matronly
manner.

Martin did not answer, but turning briskly toward the doctor, he
devoted himself to the business in hand. Peter had climbed on an
inverted barrel, to inspect and advise. Alix dashed upstairs for
nails and hammer; the doctor whittled pegs; Martin measured the
comparative strength of ropes and branches with a judicial eye and
hand. Anne flitted about, suggesting, commenting, her pretty
little head tipped to one side.

They were all deep in the first united tug, each person placed
carefully by the doctor, and guys for the rope driven at intervals
decided by Martin, when there was an interruption for Cherry's
arrival on the scene. With characteristic coquetry she did not
approach, as the others had, by means of the front porch and the
garden path, but crept from the study window into a veritable
tunnel of green bloom, and came crawling down it, as sweet and
fragrant, as lovely and as fresh, as the roses themselves. She
wore a scant pink gingham that had been a dozen times to the tub,
and was faded and small; it might have been a regal mantle and
diadem without any further enhancing her extraordinary beauty. Her
bright head was hidden by a blue sunbonnet, assumed, she explained
later, because the thorns tangled her hair; but as, laughing and