“Well, Agnes Olive, if you feel that you have profited so much by his benefactions, then you are not playing fair if you don’t invite some of us down to meet your ‘special,’ when he comes next week.  Mary, what do you think?  A.O. has a suitor!  A boy from home.  He is to come next week, armed with a note from her ‘fond payrents,’ giving him permission to call.  After talking about him all term and getting my curiosity up to fever heat about such a paragon as she makes him out to be, she blasts all my hopes by flatly refusing to let me meet him.  Pig!” she made a grimace of mock disgust at A.O.

“I wouldn’t care, if you weren’t such an awful tease,” admitted A.O.  “But I know how you’ll criticize him afterward.  You’ll make a byword of everything he said and quote it to me till kingdom come. You know how it would be, don’t you, Mary?” turning to her.  “You wouldn’t want her taking notes on everything he said if you had a—­a—­a friend—­”

“‘Oh, call it by some better name, for friendship sounds too cold,’” interrupted Elise.

“Well, I haven’t any a—­a—­whatever it is Elise wants to call it,” said Mary, laughing.  “I only wish I had.  I’ve always thought it would be nice to have one, but I suppose I’ll have to go to the end of my days singing:  ‘Every lassie has her laddie, Nane they say hae I.’  That has always seemed such a sad song to me.”

“Oh, oh!” cried Elise, perversely, who seemed to be in a mood for teasing everybody.  She pointed an accusing spoon at her before putting it back in her mouth.

“What about Phil Tremont, I’d like to know!  He saved her from an Indian once, A.O., out on the desert.  It was dreadfully romantic.  And when he was best man at Eugenia Forbes’s wedding, and Mary was flower girl, Mary got the shilling that was in the bride’s cake.  It was an old English shilling, coined in the reign of Bloody Mary, with Philip’s and Mary’s heads on it.  That is a sure sign they were meant for each other.  Phil said right out at the table before everybody that fate had ordered that he should be the lucky man.  Mary has that shilling this blessed minute, put away in her purse for a pocket piece, and she carries it everywhere she goes.  I saw it yesterday when she was looking in her purse for a key, and she got as red as—­as red as she is this minute.”

Elise finished gleefully, elated with the success of her teasing.  “My!  How you are blushing, Mary.  Look at her, A.O.”  Her dark eyes twinkled mischievously as she sang in a meaning tone: 

     “Amang the train there is a swain
        I dearly lo’e mysel’. 
      But what’s his name or where’s his hame
        I dinna choose to tell.”

“I’m not blushing,” protested Mary, hotly.  “And it is silly to talk that way when everybody knows that Phil Tremont never cared anything for any girl except Lloyd Sherman.”

“Maybe not at one time,” insisted Elise.  “And neither did Lieutenant Logan care about any girl but my beloved sister Allison at one time.  I’m not mentioning names, but you know very well that she’s not the one he is crazy about now.  Just wait till fate brings you and Phil together again.  You’ll probably meet him during the Christmas vacation if you go to New York.”