“No, I’m not a grandfather—­but, when I come to think of it, I’m a cousin.”

She accepted this with composure.  “Are you?” she inquired indifferently after a minute.

While she spoke he asked himself if she were really dull, or if she had already learned to fence with her exrustic weapons?  Her face was brimming with expression, but, as he reminded himself, one never could tell.

“I haven’t any cousin but you, Molly.  Don’t you think you can agree to take me?”

She shook her head, and he saw, or imagined he saw, the shadow of her indignant surprise darken her features.

“I’ve never thought of you as my cousin,” she answered.

“But I am, Molly.”

“I don’t think of you so,” she retorted.  Again, as in the case of Kesiah’s advances, she was refusing to constitute a law by her acknowledgment.

“Don’t you think if you tried very hard you might begin to?”

“Why should I try?”

“Well, suppose we say just because I want you to.”

“That wouldn’t help me.  I can’t feel that it would make any difference.”

“What I want, you mean?”

“Yes, what you want.”

“Aren’t you a shade more tolerant of my existence than you were at first?”

“I suppose so, but I’ve never thought about it—­any more than I’ve thought of this ten thousand a year.  It’s all outside of my life, but grandfather’s in it.”

“Don’t you ever feel that you’d like to get outside of it yourself?  The world’s a big place.”

For the first time she appeared attentive to his words.

“I’ve often wondered what it was like—­especially the cities—­New York, Paris, London.  Paris is the best, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Paris is the best to me.  Have you ever thought that you’d like to wear pretty gowns and drive through a green park in the spring—­filled with other carriages in which are wonderful women?”

“But I’d feel so miserable and countrified,” she answered.  “Are they any happier than I am—­those wonderful women?”

“Perhaps not so happy—­there’s a green-eyed dragon gnawing at the hearts of most of them, and you, my nut-brown beauty, have never felt his fangs.”

“I’d like to see them,” she said after a minute, and moved slowly onward.

“Some day you may.  Look here, Molly,” he burst out impulsively, “I’m not going to be sentimental about you.  I haven’t the least idea of making love to you—­I’ve had enough of that sort of rot, God knows—­but I do like you tremendously, and I want to stand to you as a big brother.  I never had a sister, you know,” he added.

Something earnest and tender in his voice touched her generosity, which overflowed so easily.

“And I never had a brother,” she rejoined.

“Then, that’s where I’ll come in, little cousin,” he answered gently, and drawing her to him, kissed her cheek with a caress which surprised him by its unlikeness to the ordinary manifestations of love.