“I looked in all the bookshops in the city for your latest works, Miss Marian,” said Mr. Hepworth, “but they must have been all sold out, for I couldn’t find any.”

“Too bad,” said Marian.  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until a new edition is printed.”

“You’re not to tease Marian,” said Patty reprovingly.  “She’s been as patient as an angel under a perfect storm of chaff, and I’m not going to allow any more of it.”

“I don’t mind,” said Marian.  “I think, if one is really in earnest, one oughtn’t to be annoyed by good-natured fun.”

“Quite right,” said Kenneth; “and ambition, if it’s worth anything, ought to rise above comment of any sort.”

“It ought to be strengthened by comment of any sort,” said Mr. Hepworth.

“Of any sort?” asked Marian thoughtfully.

“Yes, for comment always implies recognition, and that in itself means progress.”

“Have you an ambition, Mr. Hepworth?” said Patty suddenly.  “But you have already achieved yours.  You are a successful artist.”

“A man may have more than one ambition,” said Mr. Hepworth slowly, “and I have not achieved my dearest one.”

“I suppose you want to paint even better than you do,” said Patty.

“Yes,” said the artist, smiling a little, “I hope I shall always want to paint better than I do.  What’s your ambition, Harper?”

“To build bridges,” said Kenneth.  “I’m going to be a civil engineer, but my ambition is to be a bridge-builder.  And I’ll get there yet,” he added, with a determined nod of his head.

“I think you will,” said Mr. Hepworth, “and I’m sure I hope so.”

Then the talk turned to lighter themes than ambition, and merry laughter and jest filled up the miles to Allaire.

All were delighted with the place.  Aside from the picturesque ruined buildings and the eerie mysterious-looking old mill, there was a novel interest in the strange silent air of desertion that seemed to invest the place with an almost palpable loneliness.

“I don’t like it,” said Patty.  “Come on, let’s go home.”

But to Marian’s more romantic imagination it all seemed most attractive, so different was her temperament from that of her sunshiny, merry-hearted cousin.

At last they did go home, and Patty chattered gaily all the way in order, as she said, to drive away the musty recollections of that forlorn old place.

“How did you like it, Nan?” she asked, when they were all back at the hotel.

“I thought it beautiful,” said Nan, smiling.

That evening there was a small informal dance in the parlours.  Not a large hop, like the one given the week before, but Patty declared the small affair was just as much fun as the other.

“I always have all the fun I can possibly hold, anyway,” she said; “and what more can anybody have?”

Toward the close of the evening Mr. Fairfield came up to Patty, who was sitting, with a crowd of merry young people, in a cosey corner of the veranda.