“Oh, but I respect them!” said Mrs. Merryweather.  “There is nothing I respect more highly than a perigee, unless it be an apogee, which always sounds like the beginning of an incantation.  So Hilda likes them, does she?”

“Of course,” said Roger, slowly, skipping stones over the pond with thoughtful accuracy; “she has never studied any of these things, but she has really an astonishing aptitude for them.  And her hand is so steady, and she has such a true eye.”

“Was that why you kept her sitting on a rock, waving a towel, for three mortal hours, yesterday morning?” asked his sister-in-law, dryly.

Roger turned scarlet.

“Was it so long?” he said.  “I didn’t know—­I never noticed.  I—­was taking observations, you know, and she seemed so—­did she say she was tired?  Was I a brute?  Of course I was!”

“Don’t go off at a tangent, or whatever you call the thing!” said Mrs. Merryweather.  “She said she had had a most delightful morning, and that waving a towel had been her favourite amusement from baby-hood.”

Roger looked wistfully at his sister-in-law.  They were genuinely fond of each other, but they spoke different languages, and he sometimes found it difficult to follow her turns of speech.  He was silent for a few minutes, absorbed in calculating the curves of his stones, which really skimmed in an astonishing manner.

“I suppose,” he said, presently, watching a particularly adventurous pebble, “I suppose, Miranda, that I must seem—­well—­ quite an old fellow, to such a young creature as that?”

Mrs. Merryweather had a quizzical reply on the tip of her tongue, but glancing at Roger’s face, thought better of it, and merely said, “My dear boy, don’t be absurd!”

“I don’t mean to be absurd,” said Roger, sitting upright, and forgetting his pebbles.  “But—­well, I am a kind of grandfather to all the children, you know, and she would naturally—­eh? regard me in the same light.  That—­a—­that seems perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it?”

Mrs. Merryweather made no reply.  Roger followed the direction of her eyes, and saw Hildegarde and Gerald coming up from the wharf.  Hildegarde had been drying her hair after the daily swim, and it hung in long locks over her shoulders; the tall boy was bending over her, pleading earnestly for something.

“Just a little bit!” he said, as they came within hearing.  “Oh, I say, Miss Hilda, just a scrap.  You have such lots, you never would miss it.  Just a little lock of hair!”

Roger Merryweather’s face grew very grave.  He did not move, but his grasp tightened on the pebble in his hand.

“What do you want of it?” said downright Hilda, laughing and tossing her tawny mane.  Mrs. Merryweather listened for the faintest shade of coquetry in the girl’s tone, found none, and listened on, well content.

“What do I want of it?” cried Gerald.  “What a question!—­

    “O Hilda, fair beyond compare! 
     I’ll make a garland of thy hair,
     Shall twine my heart forevermair,
     Until the day I dee!”