And she left him there with his box upon the wall; turned and hurried along the path, and in through the little white gate.

CHAPTER IV.

NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT.

Rodney Sherrett got up from the breakfast table, where he had eaten half an hour later than the rest of the family, threw aside the newspaper that had served to accompany his meal as it had previously done his father’s, and walked out through the conservatory upon the slope of lawn scattered over with bright little flower-beds, among which his sister, with a large shade hat on, and a pair of garden scissors and a basket in her hands, was moving about, cutting carnations and tea-roses and bouvardia and geranium leaves and bits of vines, for her baskets and shells and vases.

“I say, Amy, why haven’t you been over to the Argenters’ this long while?  Why don’t you get Sylvie here?”

“Why, I did go, Rod!  Just when you asked me to.  And she has been here; she called three weeks ago.”

“O, poh!  After the spill!  Of course you did.  Just called; and she called.  Why need that be the end of it?  Why don’t you make much of her?  I can tell you she’s a girl you might make much of.  She behaved like a lady, that day; and a woman,—­that’s more.  She was neither scared nor mad; didn’t scream, nor pout; nor even stand round to keep up the excitement.  She was just cool and quiet, and took herself off properly.  I don’t know another girl that would have done so.  She saved me out of the scrape as far as she was concerned; she might have made it ten times the muss it was.  I’d rather run down a whole flock of sheep than graze the varnish off a woman’s wheel, as a general principle.  There’s real backbone to Sylvie Argenter, besides her prettiness.  My father would like her, I know.  Why don’t you bring her here; get intimate with her?  I can’t do it,—­too fierce, you know.”

Amy Sherrett laughed.

“What a nice little cat’s-paw a sister makes!  Doesn’t she, Rod?”

“I wonder if cats don’t like chestnuts too, sometimes,” said Rod; and then he whistled.

“What a worry you are, Rod!” said Amy, with a little frown that some pretty girls have a way of making; half real and half got up for the occasion; a very becoming little pucker of a frown that seems to put a lovely sort of perplexed trouble into the beautiful eyes, only to show how much too sweet and tender they really are ever to be permitted a perplexity, and what a touching and appealing thing it would be if a trouble should get into them in any earnest.  “In term time I’m always wishing it well over, for fear of what dreadful thing you may do next; and when it is vacation, it gets to be so much worse, here and there and everywhere, that I’m longing for you to be safe back in Cambridge.”