To Henry came the conviction that he was doing his duty, and yet he could not at times subdue the feeling that pleasant environment was the advocate that had urged this decision.  But he refused to argue with himself.  Sometimes he strode after Mrs. Witherspoon as she went about the house, and he knew that she was happy because be followed her; and up and down the hall he romped with Ellen.  They termed it a frolic that they should have enjoyed years ago, and they laughingly said that from the past they would snatch their separated childhood and blend it now.  It was a back-number pleasure, they agreed, but that, like an old print, it held a charm in its quaintness.  She brought out a doll that had for years been asleep in a little blue trunk.  “Her name is Rose,” she said, and with a broad ribbon she deftly made a cap and put it on the doll’s head.  After a while Rose was put to sleep again—­the bright little mummy of a child’s affection, Henry called her—­and the playmates became older.  She told him of the many suitors that had sought to woo her; of rich men; of poor young fellows who strove to keep time to the quick-changing tune of fashion; of moon-impressed youths who measured their impatient yearning.

“And when are you going to let one of them take you away?” Henry asked.  Holding his hand, she had led him in front of a mirror.

“Oh, not at all,” she answered, smiling at herself and then at him.  “I haven’t fallen in love with anybody yet.”

“And is that necessary?”

“Why, you know it is, goose.  I’d be a pretty-looking thing to marry a man I didn’t love, wouldn’t I?”

“You are a pretty thing anyway.”

“Oh, do you really think so?”

“I know it.”

“You are making fun of me.  If you had met me accidentally, would you have thought so?”

“Surely; my eyes are always open to the truth.”

“If I could meet such a man as you are I could love him—­’with a dreaminess of eye not characteristic of this strong, pragmatic family.’”

She broke away from him, but he caught her.  “If I were not related to you,” he said, “I would be tempted to kiss you.”

“Oh, you’d be tempted to kiss me, would you?  If you were not related to me I wouldn’t let you, but as it is—­there!”

His blood tingled.  Her hair was falling about her shoulders.  For a moment it was a strife for him to believe that she was his sister.

“Beautiful,” he said, running his fingers through her hair.  “Somebody said that the glory of a woman is her hair; and it is true.  It is a glory that always catches me.”

“Does it?  Well, I must put up my glory before papa comes.  Oh, you are such a romp; but I was just a little afraid of you at first, you were so sedate and dreamy of eye.”

She ran away from him, and looking back with mischief in her eyes, she hummed a schottish, and keeping time to it, danced up the stairway.