“Cherry’s only a child,” she assured him, “and Alix will not be ready to give her heart to any man for years to come!  But I’m twenty-four, Uncle.  And sometimes I feel ready to—­to try my own wings!”

He smiled at her absently; he was thinking of her mother, an articulate, academic, resolute woman, of whom he had never been fond.

“That’s the way the wind blows, eh?” he asked kindly.

Anne widened her pretty eyes.

“Well—­you see how much he’s here!  You see the flowers and books and notes.  I’m not the sort of girl to wear my heart on my sleeve,” Anne, who was fond of small conservational tags, assured him merrily.  “But there must be some fire where there’s so much smoke!” she ended.

“You’re not sure, my dear?” he asked, after some thought.

“Oh, no!” she answered.  “It’s just a fancy that persists in coming and going.  You know, Uncle Lee,” Anne pursued, confidentially, “I’ve always had rather a high ideal of marriage.  I’ve always said that the man I would marry must be a big man—­oh, I don’t mean only physically!  I mean morally, mentally—­a man among men!”

“And you think young Lloyd—­answers that description, eh?”

“I think he does, Uncle Lee,” she answered seriously.  And immediately afterward she got to her feet, saying brightly, “Well! we mustn’t take this too gravely—­yet.  It was only that I wanted to be open and above-board with you, Uncle, from the beginning.  That’s the only honest way.”

“That’s wise and right!” her uncle answered, in the kindly, absent tone he had used to them as children, a tone he was apt to use to Anne when she was in her highest mood, and one she rather resented.

“Cherry, now—­” he asked, detaining her for a moment.  “She—­you don’t think that perhaps Peter admires her?”

“Peter!” Anne echoed amazedly, and stood thinking.

Peter was more than thirty years old, thin, scholarly, something of a solitary, the sweet, dreamy, affectionate neighbour who had shared the girls’ lives for the past ten years.  Cherry had bullied Peter since her babyhood, ruined his piano with sticky fingers, trampled his rose-beds, coaxed him into asking her father to let her sit up for dinner.  For some reason she could not, or would not, define, Anne liked the idea of Cherry and Peter falling in love—­

“Somehow one doesn’t think of Peter as marrying any one—­” she said slowly, still trying to grasp the thought.  “He’s so—­self-sufficient,” she added, shaking her head.  “You—­you wouldn’t like that, Uncle?”

“Peter is a dear fellow,” the doctor mused.  “But Cherry—­why, she’s barely eighteen!  He—­” The old man hesitated, began again:  “I suppose there’s no reason why Peter shouldn’t kiss her, in a—­ brotherly sort of way?” he submitted doubtfully.

“Did he kiss her?” Anne exclaimed.

“I don’t know that he did,” Cherry’s father said hastily.