and wholesome friendships with boys as well as with girls.  So far as lay in his power, he had taught Cicely “to ride, to row, to swim, to tell the truth and to fight the devil,” and the result was quite to the liking of Billy and Theodora.  They enjoyed Cicely’s irresponsible fun and her frank expressions of opinion; they enjoyed the atmosphere of ozone that never failed to surround her; they even confessed, when they were quite by themselves, to a sneaking sense of enjoyment in her rare flashes of temper.  True, it was not always helpful to Theodora to be roused from her work by the monotonous er-er, er-er of scales and five finger exercises, and there were moments when she wondered if pianos were never built with only a soft pedal and that lashed into a position which would entail chronic operation.  There were moments when the house jarred with the slamming of doors and echoed to the shouts of a high, clear young voice; and there were hours and hours when Melchisedek, as he was now to be called, whimpered without ceasing outside her door, with an exasperating determination to come in and sit supreme in the midst of her manuscript.

And then there was Allyn to be considered.

In her most optimistic moments, Theodora had pictured Cicely as a dainty, clinging little maiden who would cajole and coddle Allyn out of his unfriendly moods.  Cicely certainly did rouse Allyn from those moods; but it was by no process of feminine cajolery.  She went at him, as the phrase is, hammer and tongs.  Good-tempered herself, she demanded good temper from him.  Failing that, she lectured him roundly.  Failing again, she turned her back upon him and left him severely alone, with the result that, in an inconceivably short time, Allyn generally came to terms and exerted himself to be agreeable once more.  Allyn still kept up the pretence of indifference to her, of superiority over her; Cicely had no pretences.  She showed her liking for him frankly; just as frankly she showed her disgust at his hours of gloom.

Upon one point, however, Allyn maintained a firm stand.  He would put up with no endearments.  Theodora was the only person who dared lay affectionate hands upon him, who dared address him in affectionate terms.  Just once, in the early days of her being in the Farringtons’ household, Cicely, moved with pity at the sight of a bruised forefinger, had ventured upon a caressing pat on Allyn’s cheek.  It was much the caress she would have bestowed upon Melchisedek, if she had chanced to step on his paw; but she never forgot the look of disgusted scorn with which Allyn had marched out of the room.  Accustomed from her babyhood to petting her father and being petted by him, the girl was at first at a loss to interpret the situation.  When the truth dawned upon her that Allyn was really in earnest, she refused to be suppressed, and persecuted the boy with every species of endearment which her naughty brain could invent.