girl making herself agreeable to a young man.  Dan was well hardened to her cajoleries by this time; he was confident that she would have made “sweet eyes at Caliban.”  Harwood, smoking the cigar Bassett had ordered for him, compared favorably with other young men who had dawned upon Marian’s horizon.  Like most Western boys who go East to college, he had acquired the habit of careful pressing and brushing and combing; his lean face had a certain distinction, and he was unfailingly courteous and well-mannered.

“This will be tough on mama,” she observed casually.

“Pray, be more explicit!”

“Oh, Aunt Sally having Sylvia up there at the lake again.”

“Why shouldn’t she have her there if she wants her?  I thought your mother admired Sylvia.  I gathered that ray of light somewhere, from you or Mrs. Owen.”

“Oh, mama was beautiful to her; but I shall always think, just between you and me and that spoon, that it was Aunt Sally asking Sylvia to the lake that time that gave mama nervous prostration.”

“Nonsense!  I advise you, as an old friend, not to say such things:  you’d better not even think them.”

“Well, it was after that, when she saw that Aunt Sally had taken up Sylvia, that mama got that bug about having me go to college.  She got the notion that it was Sylvia’s intellectual gifts that interested Aunt Sally; and mama thought I’d better improve my mind and get into the competition.”

“You thought your mother was jealous?  I call that very unkind; it’s not the way to speak of your mother.”

“Well, if you want to be nasty and lecture me, go ahead, Mr. Harwood.  You must like Sylvia pretty well yourself; you took her back to college once and had no end of a lark,—­I got that from Aunt Sally, so you needn’t deny it.”

“Humph!  Of course I like Sylvia; any one’s bound to.”

“But if Aunt Sally leaves her all her money, just because she’s so bright, and educated, and cuts me off, then what would be the answer?”

“I shouldn’t have anything to say about it; it would be Mrs. Owen that did the saying,” laughed Dan.  “Why didn’t you meet the competition and go to college?  You have brains, but you don’t seem interested in anything but keeping amused.”

“I suppose,” she answered petulantly, “it would please you to see me go to teaching a kindergarten or something like that.  Not for Marian!  I’m going to see life—­” and she added ruefully—­“if I get the chance!  Why doesn’t papa leave Fraserville and come to the city?  They say he can have any political office he wants, and he ought to run for governor or something like that, just on my account.”

“I dare say he’s just waiting for you to suggest it.  Why not the presidency?  You could get a lot of fun out of the White House, ordering the army around, and using the battleships to play with.  The governorship and trifles like that would only bore you.”