“Marry him!” Alix had echoed in simple amazement.  Marry him—­what was all this sudden change in the household when a man could no sooner appear than some girl began to talk of marriage?  Alix had always rather fancied the idea that all girls had an opportunity of capriciously choosing from a dozen eligible swains, but Cherry had quickly anchored herself to the first strange man that appeared, and here was Anne dimpling and looking demure over a small, neat youth just out of law school.  Certainly the little person of Justin Little was a strange harbour for all Anne’s vague dreams of a conquering hero.  Stupefied, Alix watched the affair progress.

“I don’t imagine it’s serious!” her father said on an April walk.  Peter, tramping beside them, was interested but silent.

“My dear father,” the girl protested, “have you listened to them?  They’ve been contending for weeks that they were just remarkably good friends—­that’s why she calls him Frenny!”

“Ah—­I see!” the doctor said mildly, as Peter’s wild laugh burst forth.

“But now,” Alix pursued, “she’s told him that as she cannot be what he wishes, they had better not meet!”

“Poor Anne!” the old doctor commented.

“Poor nothing!  She’s having the time of her life,” her cousin said unfeelingly.  “She told me to-day that she was afraid that she had checked one of the most brilliant careers at the bar.”

“I had no idea of all this!” the doctor confessed, amazed.  “I’ve seen the young man—­noticed him about.  Well—­well—­well!  Anne, too.”

“You and me next, little sweetums,” suggested Peter, dropping down beside the doctor, who had seated himself, panting, upon a log.

Alix, the dog’s silky head under her hand, was resting against the prop formed by a great tree trunk behind her shoulders, and looking down at the two men.  She grinned.

“Nothingstirring, Puddeny-woodeny!” she answered, blandly.

The old man looked from Peter’s smiling, indifferent face to his daughter’s unembarrassed smile; shook his head in puzzled fashion, and returned to his pocket the big handkerchief with which he had been wiping his forehead.

“There ye are!” he said, shrugging.  “Cherry goes gaily off with a man she’s only known for a few weeks; Anne dresses up this new fellow with goodness knows what qualities; and you and Alix here, neighbours all your lives, laugh as if marriage was all a joke!”

“Our marriage would be, darling,” Alix assured him.  “But, Dad, if you would like me to marry Peter, by George, I will!” she added, dutifully.  “Peter, consider yourself betrothed!  Bucky,” she said to the dog, “dat’s oo new Daddy!”

Neither man paid her the slightest attention.  Peter scraped a lump of dried mud from the calf of his high boots, and the doctor musingly looked back along the rough trail they had climbed.

“I’d have felt safer—­I’d feel very safe to have one of my girls in your care, Peter,” the older man said at last, thoughtfully.  “I hate to see them scatter.  Well!”