“No, dear, they should marry for love, if they marry at all.  Will you marry me when you grow to be a young lady?”

“No, you’ll be too old then.  Put your head down.  You go and take away Miss Du Plessis from that naughty, bad little man, and I’ll love you, O, ever so much.’

“But perhaps she won’t have me.”

“Oh, yes she will, because you would look very nice if you would take that black stuff that scratched me off your face.”

“I will, I’ll get a clean shave at Collingwood this very night.”

“Then I’ll get Auntie to write to Marjorie and tell her that my own Prince Charming, with a clean shave, is coming to take Cecile away from the ugly little rich man that says:  ‘An’ ‘ow is my young friend?’ Won’t that be nice?”

“Oh, please don’t tell your aunt to write that.”

“But I will, so there!”

The waggonette was now in the midst of a rather pretty village situated on a branch of the Nottawasaga River, and came to a stand still opposite the post office.

“If you gentlemen have business in the village, you can get out here,” said Mrs. Thomas, “but, if not, we shall be pleased to have you dine with us.”

The pedestrians thought of their last tavern experience, and felt disposed to accept the hospitable invitation, but Marjorie clinched their resolution by saying:  “Eugene is coming to dinner with me, and his friend may come too,” at which everybody laughed.  The waggon moved on for another half mile, and then stopped in front of a pretty and commodious frame house, painted white, with red-brown doors and window frames and green shutters.  Porch and verandah were covered with Virginia creeper, climbing roses and trumpet honeysuckle.  Mr. Rawdon looked after himself, but Wilkinson and Coristine helped the ladies and the little girl to dismount, while an old man with a shock head, evidently Saul, took the horses round.  Muggins greeted the whole party with a series of wiggles and barks, whereupon the Grinstun man gave him a savage kick that sent the dog away yelping.

“I said you were a naughty, bad, cruel man to my own self and to people I like,” said Marjorie with indignation, “but now I say it right out to you, and for everybody to hear that wants to—­a nasty, ugly, cruel little man!”

The working geologist was very angry and got very red in the face.  Had he dared, he would probably have kicked the girl too.  Policy compelled him to keep his temper outwardly, so he turned it off with a laugh, and said:  “You don’t know that little beast has I do, Marjorie, or you wouldn’t go hand take ’is part.  Of all the hungrateful, treacherous, sneakin’, bad-’earted curs that ever gnawed a bone, ’e’s the top-sawyer.”

“I don’t believe it,” answered Marjorie stoutly, and with all the license allowed to a late and only child.