“I can’t help dreading you, nice and amiable as you look,” said Nancy candidly to Tom Hamilton; “I am so afraid you’ll fall in love with the Yellow House and want it back again.  Are you engaged to be married to a little-footed China doll, or anything like that?” she asked with a teasing, upward look and a disarming smile that robbed the question of any rudeness.

“No, not engaged to anything or anybody, but I’ve a notion I shall be, soon, if all goes well!  I’m getting along in years now!”

“I might have known it!” sighed Nancy.  “It was a prophetic instinct, my calling you the Yellow Peril.”

“It isn’t a bit nice of you to dislike me before you know me; I didn’t do that way with you!”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, in the first letter you ever wrote father you sent your love to any of his children that should happen to be of the right size.  I chanced to be just the right size, so I accepted it, gratefully; I’ve got it here with me to-night; no, I left it in my other coat,” he said merrily, making a fictitious search through his pockets.

Nancy laughed at his nonsense; she could not help it.

“Will you promise to get over your foolish and wicked prejudices if I on my part promise never to take the Yellow House away from you unless you wish?” continued Tom.

“Willingly,” exclaimed Nancy joyously.  “That’s the safest promise I could make, for I would never give up living in it unless I had to.  First it was father’s choice, then it was mother’s, now all of us seem to have built ourselves into it, as it were.  I am almost afraid to care so much about anything, and I shall be so relieved if you do not turn out to be really a Yellow Peril after all!”

“You are much more of a Yellow Peril yourself!” said Tom, “with that dress and that ribbon in your hair!  Will you dance the next dance with me, please?”

“It’s The Tempest; do you know it?”

“No, but I’m not so old but I may learn.  I’ll form myself on that wonderful person who makes jokes about the Admiral and plays the fiddle.”

“That’s Ossian Popham, principal prop of the House of Carey!”

“Lucky dog!  Have you got all the props you need?”

Nancy’s hand was not old or strong or experienced enough to keep this strange young man in order, and just as she was meditating some blighting retort he went on:—­

“Who is that altogether adorable, that unspeakably beautiful lady in black?—­the one with the pearl comb that looks like a crown?”

“That’s mother,” said Nancy, glowing.

“I thought so.  At least I didn’t know any other way to account for her.”

“Why does she have to be accounted for?” asked Nancy, a little bewildered.

“For the same reason that you do,” said the audacious youth.  “You explain your mother and your mother explains you, a little, at any rate.  Where is the celebrated crimson rambler, please?”