her face raised quickly now and then for a flashing look, Peter
felt that he could have killed this newcomer, this thief, this
usurper of the place that he himself might have filled.

"Dad's always said he disapproved of long engagements," Alix
commented, amusedly, "but you ought to hear him now! This thing--
he won't even call it an engagement--it's an understanding, or a
preference--is to be a profound secret, and Cherry's to be twenty-
one before any one else but ourselves knows--"

"Your father is quite right!" Peter said sharply, in his most
elderly manner. They were resting after the first set, and Cherry
and Martin, in the opposite court, were out of hearing.

"When your hair gets tossed back that way," Alix observed
innocently, "lots more gray shows! I think you're turning gray
pretty young, Peter, aren't you? Are you forty yet? You're not
forty, are you?"

"I'm thirty-six," Peter answered briefly. "My father was gray at
twenty-seven!" he added, after a pause.

"I have a gray hair," Alix started. "People talk about the first
gray hair--"

Peter did not hear her. There was beginning of a little hope in
his heart. Girls did not always fulfill their first engagements,
did not often do so, in fact. The thing was a secret; it might
well come to nothing, after all.