"Here is Sir Thomas," said Lady Harrison, rising a little nervously from the chair by Daisy's in the dining-room, as she saw through the window, the long black car glide up the drive; "now, I think you'll do very well, dearie. Just follow Jean's instructions when you're bringing the things into the dining-room. You'll have to wait on the table to-night, you see, since Alice has left us."

"Dinna fash yersel, lassie," said Jean, as she filled the soup-tureen—watching Daisy with some amusement as the latter, anxious to please her mistress—the first disinterestedly kind person she had met in this bumping, jostling, crowding, yet delightful city of her great adventure—kept tiptoeing over to the swinging door, pushing it cautiously a bit open, and peering through into the dining-room; "ye needna keek through the crack o' the door. I can tell by the voices when they're set doon. There—listen!"

Voices that had been mixed and muffled in the distant drawing-room swelled into sudden distinctness, as a door opened. The creak of boots dried by the sun of the street was smothered in soft carpeting as the tide of footfalls flowed about the island table in the big dining-room. A chair squeaked with the weight of a heavy figure sitting down. The feet shuffled to silence. A silk kerchief whistled out of a pocket, and a nose blew like the six o'clock siren of a flour-mill.

"There, then, new gel," said Alice, coming into the room at the moment with her hat pinned on, exhaling the cologne of her recent titivation; "look sharp now. Serve the soup while 'e's a-blowin 'is nose. 'E'll 'oller like a wild bull if it ain't on the table the minit 'e gets 'is face clear o' his 'andkeher. Precious little excuse 'e needs to mieke an upraw, 'e down't."

Hastened by this exhortation from one who evidently knew whereof she spoke, Daisy, her color risen to a fine bloom in her excitement, passed through the swinging door which Jean, flattened back out of sight, held open for her, and bore to the side-table the tray with the covered soup-tureen and warm plates.

"Hey—bounce along here, English." Harrison, whose back was toward her, crammed his silk handkerchief, after a persistent habit of his earlier coatless and manual days, into his hip-pocket, and spoke as to Alice; "what do we pay you for?"

Daisy felt every nerve in her body recoil aggressively at his tone; but, in response to a rather helpless glance from the big woman sitting awkwardly at the other end of the table, she came over rapidly with the soup-dish.

There was a certain habitual jerk around and quelling stare upward—his "pur-rsonal power" must be kept active—which Sir Thomas always delivered when the maid reached his chair. Alice, who had been a maid of many employers, whose eccentricities she had made a point of humoring, had early noted this gesture of Harrison's, and had always made a point of pausing two or three feet away until the observance was over, to avoid possibility of accident to the dish she bore. But Daisy, hurrying to the table, was caught unprepared, right at Harrison's side. His jerking shoulder hit the bottom of the soup-tureen. It fell, and with it a Niagara of hot soup poured down Sir Thomas' arm and shoulder and into his lap. This happened before he had time to follow the twist around with the usual glare upward.

A delightful feeling of unloosed anger flowed over the contractor. Here at least was an excuse to "call down" the wary Alice. Sweeping the greasy surplus from vest and trousers with a scrape or two of the side of his napkin, Harrison gathered up his blue jowl, narrowed his eyes, knitted his forehead, and wrenched his head around to bellow. Then he saw, not the white-lashed, thin-nosed Alice, but Daisy, flushing and dimpling irrepressibly as she bent to pick up the soup-tureen.

What Harrison had intended to say was something like this: "Blast your sun-kissed English hide, you'll pay for this mess. An' then I'll fire you ..." etc., etc.—making each sentence hurt as much as possible, according to his knowledge of Alice's sensibilities.

What Sir Thomas Harrison actually did say, after a brief stare at the new maid, was this: "Pretty good for a start-off, little one. Pret-ty good!"

And Daisy, kneeling over the upturned dish, her face below the edge of the table and invisible from the lady and the guest, tipped her head a little to one side and twinkled up at her employer out of the corner of her eye. His face changed ever so little—just a slight lowering of the eyelids and a quiver outward of the thick lower lip—but enough to let Daisy know that she would have no more trouble with Sir Thomas Harrison except that peculiar kind of trouble she knew well how to deal with—that kind of trouble which made life, for pretty and piquant Daisy Nixon, a continuous chain of daring adventures.

* * * * *

Sir William Ware was a stroller, with hands in pockets, on the veranda of the world. It is true that he was a bank president; but the position, even more honorary than bank presidencies usually are, gave him as little work or concern as his several other business connections of the same kind. Agents did the worrying; Sir William merely spent the money, or as much of it as a bachelor of quiet tastes required. A large unused portion of his income was reinvested each year. The principal thus grew instead of shrank; and Sir William, as he put it, had long ago "quite given up hope of ever being able to die a pauper."

Sir William had a large library, but seldom read books. He reserved his seats seasonally at the theatre, but seldom attended shows. Life itself was the novel he read and the drama he watched. A man who has those two things most people want most—money, and social prestige and power—and has remained so far unspoiled by having them, that he knows keenly and wisely wherein they are valuable and wherein worthless: such a man is apt to develop a humorous contempt for the book and drama as interpreters of life, when he compares chapter or act with his experience of the real thing.

Ware had the highest social status, both by birth—which counts for little in the West—and by innate qualification, which counts everywhere in desirable circles. A patrician, innately so in the sense of being a gentleman as well as a thoroughbred, is seldom spoiled by being born wealthy. Sir William, who had enjoyed but never either misused or wasted his money; and who, welcomed in any social circle, was yet a friend of man everywhere, would have liked, if it had been possible, to have helped everybody to enjoyment of the same things he enjoyed. He wanted to see everybody with "a guinea he could spend." He wanted to see everybody a friend to everybody else.

Although the women, both young and old, in the circles where Ware moved had demonstrated to themselves, by trying every rivet in his celibate harness, that as far as they were concerned he was an immovable, immutable and foreordained bachelor, it was an odd fact that he had never in his own mind given up either the intention or the hope that there would some day be a Lady Ware—the kind he wanted.

These were a few of the qualities the future Lady Ware must have: Physically, she must be perfect, and of vigorous health. She must have an instinctive sophistication: an innocent girl would be flavorless. She must be frank, but not rude. She must be perennially alive and merry. She must, above all, be new material—that is, young enough not to be hardened against impress.

In his quest for a wife—or rather, in his unsuspected but ever-present matrimonial vigilance—Sir William had followed a course exactly opposite to the usual one. That is to say, instead of seeking out some woman or maiden of his circle who seemed outwardly qualified, and then analyzing her under the microscope of a long and intimate acquaintance, he first thought up the qualities he wished his future wife to possess, and then synthesized them into an imaginary Eve who abode always in his brain and was the pattern, vague, perhaps, as to actual form and feature, but palpable enough in all essentials, of the female Sir William Ware proposed to discover and marry.

When he found her, there would be no "shilly-shallying." There never had been, when a Ware found anything he particularly wanted. He would marry her "straightaway." Sir William could conceive of no obstacle. The chance that Fate would play him the trick of showing him his ideal in another man's wife was, he decided, too remote to be considered.

* * * * *

Some two hours after Daisy's appearance in the Harrison dining-room, Jean the Scotch cook, drinking tea with Daisy in the kitchen, reached out and opened the door in answer to a knock like a steam-hammer. In the doorway stood a small, shrewd-faced, grinning boy.

"Some guy out under them trees at the gate," he said, "wants 'a have a word', as he calls it, wit' that jane," indicating Daisy with a jerk of his head.

"And how d'ye ken he didna mean me?" Jean enquired, drawing in her chin and making a mouth at the messenger.

"Cos he said a 'young, good-lookin' one'," replied the youth, ingenuously; evading adroitly, however, Jean's muscular red hand as it swung in his direction.

"Sauce-box! Ye'll just keep the len'th o' my arm away, if ye're canny, after a rap like that. Skedaddle!"

The courier skedaddled. Jean closed the door and returned to the cosy table, with its cake-plate, tea-pot under cosy, cups and saucers, and sugar-dish. Daisy stood up before the looking-glass and gave her hair a little poke with her forefinger and thumb.

"Sit ye doon, lassie," Jean advised, as she stirred her tea, "let the mon come awa in, if he wants to court ye. I'm off tae my bed, richt this minute, and ye'll have the place to yersel's."

"Oh-h, I guess 'll just go and see," Daisy's eyes sparkled with resource and daring; "if it's somebody I know, I'll tell him to come earlier next time, and send him off home."

"And if it's a'body ye dinna ken," Jean said, squaring a great forearm on the table, "juist skirl. I'll bide here, with the outside door no snibbit, an' listen for a wee, in case ye need me."

Daisy's feet made a light brisk tapping on the contractor's cement driveway as she stepped smartly down toward the gate. Behind her, the big house was gradually darkening to retiring-time. Before her were great maples, with mysterious darkness between—thickening into a group with dark undergrowth at the point where the two stone gateposts marked the junction of driveway and street.

Three persons were in Daisy's mind. First, Beatty—although how he had found out her whereabouts was a puzzle. Second, old Jim Hogle of the Imperial Hotel—for the sylph, whose impulse of meanness Daisy had estimated as strong enough to over-balance self-consideration any day, might easily have played her false and told Hogle where she was. Third, the chauffeur of the jitney, perhaps come back, on the excuse of calling for his fare, to ask her to go out for a "car-ride."

Daisy found herself, in fact, hoping that the tarrier under the trees might be one of the three, although her reason for wanting to see each was different. She hoped it was Beatty, for his taking the trouble to trace her would show that he cared, which it would be a satisfaction to know. She hoped it was old Hogle, in order that she might have the chance to tell him, "plump and plain" and finally, that she was quite capable of looking after herself, and to mind his own business. She hoped it might be the chauffeur, because there had been something about that curly head and humorous eye, as well as in his friendly warning about entering the Harrison house "the back way", that suggested he might develop on acquaintance into very good "company." To Daisy, men were of only two classes—those who were "forward" and "had fun in them," and those who were backward and hadn't. She preferred "forward" to "backward" men: first, because curbing a man was "more sport" to a girl of Daisy's merry intrepidity than having to encourage him; and secondly, because backward men usually "went crazy" when once you got them started, and could not be handled at all.

She was therefore a little surprised and puzzled, but agreeably so—for the new was always agreeable to Daisy, who had been from her cradle shaped for adventure—when there stepped out from under the foliage a tall, gentlemanly man with a cane, who lifted his hat and said "Good evening"—not awkwardly but with a certain smooth ease. His face and hers were in the shadow of the gatepost; but there seemed something faintly familiar about his voice.

"Shall we go out where it's light, and take a look at each other?" he said.

Daisy, withholding speech—she had found out by experience that it was a good rule to let the other, when a stranger, do all the talking for the first few moments—let her companion precede her through the gate.

In the full light of the street-lamp he stopped, turned, rested his cane on the pavement, and looked down at her as she came out from behind the big stone post. Daisy, with a heightening of her surprise, yet with a certain familiar thrill she could not quite explain, looked up into the pleasant eyes of Harrison's guest.

She saw a man whose appearance, in every last detail, mutely vocalized that elusive and often misapplied term "gentleman"—his quiet clothes, worn unconsciously as an outward cuticle; not a muscle at constraint, either in his clean-cut friendly face or his easily-standing figure—because self had been wholly forgotten and his interest, by the polite habit of years of breeding, transferred spontaneously and with pleasant solicitude to his companion. His hair, in which a hue of gray showed, was cut sensibly and short. Although hair and skin proclaimed him an elderly man, there was about him a general air of frankness, of enthusiasm, of almost boyish eagerness, that made Daisy "take to" him in a companionable sense, at once.

Ware, on his part, saw a girl, bright and dimpling, perusing him with eyes that coruscated with sophistication and wariness—armed cap-a-pie in every virile nerve and muscle—not a bit timorous, but flashingly on guard, with every faculty at its sentry-post. He saw a girl whose lashes twinkled irrepressibly, and whose lips had to be pressed hard against the smile-impulse. He saw a girl, whose regal color and roundness and poise, and clear eyes and skin were a proclamation of health and vigor that he who ran might read. He saw a girl whom many little uncouthnesses of manner and attire showed "green" and undeveloped—in short, susceptible of tillage as a bit of wild but fertile garden-ground.

"I'm going to marry you, you know," he said, quietly, with no more preface than the friendliest of all smiles.

There! It was out—said as Sir William had long ago decided he would say it—without preamble, smoothly, quietly, as though it were a thing that had been arranged ages ago, and he were simply reminding her of it.

Ware watched the girl's face with keen curiosity—his glance steady, but so pleasant withal, that Daisy did not find it disconcerting. The girl looked back at him—her face first shortening and dimpling to a half-smile; then lengthening to sobriety; then gathering and dimpling again, and remaining so, because that was Daisy Nixon's natural expression. Daisy knew nothing about hypnotic suggestion. All she knew was that she seemed surrounded by some queer influence. She seemed—to put it the way it presented itself to her—as though she had stepped into a book or a moving-picture or a dream.

Sir William stepped to her side, crooked his arm, drew hers through it.

"Shall we have a cup of coffee, somewhere?" he said; adding in droll answer to his own invitation, "Yes, we shall, shan't we, my dear?"

Daisy, feeling as though she had temporarily become twins—one twin going along quite naturally and unquestioningly by this queer stranger's side, and the other, agog with merry curiosity, following along to see how the adventure was going to turn out—was conscious of a short walk under the city's arc-lights, an entry into a cafe on the ground floor of a great and handsome apartment-block, a side-turn into a curtained alcove, and a half involuntary sitting-down into a chair pushed adroitly behind her by a waiter in full dress and with an uncanny plaster-cast face. A table, with linen, shining silver, and cut-glass was between the quiescent twin of her queer dual self and her companion. The other twin of her, seemed to stand a bit aside, twinkling and vigilant.

Sir William, without looking at the menu the waiter held before him, gave a brisk order. As the attendant moved smoothly and quickly away, Ware filled two of the shining glasses in the centre of the table with ice-water, clinked them together, and passed one to Daisy.

"To Lady Ware," he said, gravely and pleasantly, as he drank. Daisy—at least that twin half of her who companioned the baronet at the table—seemed to know exactly what to do. She lifted her glass and sipped, tipping her little-finger up. Then her two halves merged into one a moment, and the whole Daisy said:

"Who's Lady Ware?"

Her companion, whose name she did not yet know, looked across at her with a kind of pondering exaltation—a deep but self-contained joy.

"She's one who has been a long time arriving," he said, "a long, long time, my dear. But she's here at last."

"You're an Englishman, aren't you?" Daisy plumped, naively.

"Guilty, on all counts," Sir William smiled, "but I think we shall manage to live that down, shan't we. I'm sure we can do so, if we both try hard, and try together."

"Well—Englishmen are gentlemen, anyway," Daisy conceded, drinking some more water. "I'd trust myself anywhere with an Englishman."

"Do you know, now," Sir William reached out a strong white hand and put it over hers, looking right at her in a pleased and virile way, "I am infinitely rejoiced to hear you say that—infinitely rejoiced. The way you said it, too! My word!"

His air, though Daisy at the moment could not see it that way, was the air of a man who has acquired a new pet; and, planning to train it, is surprised to find that it knows some tricks already.

"What's your name?" said Daisy.

Sir William felt ready to hug himself every time this conjugal find of his spoke. He could have danced every time she changed expression. Absolutely novel! New clay to the potter's hand!

"I am called Ware," he said, "so," Sir William had a momentary lapse, common both to more and to less intelligent men than he, "you will have to learn to be-Ware, you see."

The waiter of the plaster-cast face, holding on high a tray which he brought down with a deft flourish to the level of the table, slipped in like a whisper. There was a noiseless flicker of fingers and napery and silver—and he had vanished through the curtains again. There was left a neatly-laid table, on which Daisy saw a silver dish containing oranges, bananas, grapes and new luscious dates; a plate of cake cut thin; a coffee-pot steaming aromatically; and a side-dish with toothsome little cubes of cheese.

Ware, watching with a delight that increased each moment, saw Daisy, with a womanly and homelike little motion, reach out quite as a matter of course, pull the coffee-pot toward her, set the two cups in their saucers, with spoons beside, and look around for the cream.

"Cafe noir," said Sir William; "let's try it black, this time. If you don't like it, we'll have in some cream."

Daisy Nixon filled the cups, passed one to her companion, and, gingerly lifting to her lips the one she had retained, tasted it.

"Ugh! it's like medicine," she said; "tell the man to bring some cre-eam, quick."

Sir William Ware was so elated at the smooth and rapid development of his unique mating experiment that he could have shouted with glee. It was barely twenty-five minutes since he had first linked arms with this tip-top bit of girlhood and led her in out of the street. Now she was passing his coffee unprompted. Next, ordering him to have in the cream. If domestic relations continued to grow in this splendid, almost spontaneous manner, she would be jolly well ready for the marriage ceremony, almost, by the time this bit of a supper was over. And, if she was ready, Jove! he would be, too. It was magic, it was ripping, the way in which his synthesized connubial Galatea had taken upon herself the bloom and body of life! The baronet sat back, his napkin on his knee, contemplating Daisy with an enjoyment more keen than any sensation he could remember in all the conscious years of his half-century and more.

"Shall you like to be Lady Ware?" he said, almost deferentially.

Daisy took a date-stone from her red lips, laid it on the side of her saucer, and leaned forward, knuckles under chin, dimples dancing in and out, eyes flashing with a kind of bright shrewdness.

"I don't know," she said; letting her lashes fall slowly, and putting her head a little on one side.

"I say—stop it!" observed Sir William, so briskly that Daisy sat bolt upright, sobered for a moment; "don't do that, you know—don't flirt, please. I'm not joking. Did you think I was joking, really?"

"Joking about what?" said Daisy, in her direct way; but her eyes twinkled.

"You know jolly well what, you tantalizing little beggar," said Sir William. "Now, do be sensible. Pour me out a drop more coffee, won't you?"

Daisy's round arm and elbow tipped up piquantly as she filled the proffered cup.

"I say, I do like to see you pour coffee, you know," Ware's eyes shone like a boy's as he leaned over and, for the second time that evening, covered her hand with his. "Now, tell me, won't you, what you think about our—our plan, as it were?"

The hand on hers was strong and cool and steady as a rock. Something about the fine clean touch of it caused coquettishness to fall from Daisy like a flimsy wrap cast aside. She looked at her companion with brown eyes into which there had come a high shining of frankness and trust. The baronet received the honest beaming of that look, in which Daisy's self spoke, with a sense of satisfaction almost solemn in its profundity.

Daisy cleared her throat a little—a habit she had when about to speak seriously. Then utterance came, in the simple and plain provincialism of the western farm country.

"You seem to be in earnest about this marrying idea; and I'd trust you anywhere," she began; then paused, pondering, her free hand propped beneath her chin.

"I say, that's very jolly of you, you know," Sir William patted the hand under his.

"I'd trust you anywhere," Daisy went on, "and there isn't any reason, I guess, why I shouldn't marry you. I'm not promised to anybody else, and I like all the boys the same—just as friends. I suppose you're a pretty rich man, and I'd have a lovely home; and you're so polite and gentlemanly, you'd be an easy husband to get along with. But—but when a person marries," Daisy hesitated, a dash of color coming into her cheeks; then, putting up her chin, went on resolutely, "they have to—have to—oh, I can't put it in any fancy way, because I don't know how—they have to start right away raising kids. So that's why I don't want to marry just yet. That's why I just couldn't get married, the way I feel now, unless it was to someone I loved so much I couldn't help it."

Daisy Nixon paused, her face hot. An odd feeling—as though she would like to recall what she had just "come out with"—possessed her for a moment. Never before, in all her battling and aggressive seventeen years, had she, as it were, let down her guard and talked so frankly and freely. But frankness awakens frankness; and this fine-looking stranger, with his straightforward and pleasant manner, had drawn her out in spite of herself.

Sir William did not speak for a little while. There was a glow in his eyes, as he regarded her, that might have been the index of any one of several emotions.

"I hope you're not mad (angry)," Daisy seized the interpretation nearest at hand of Sir William's expression. "You needn't be, because if I ever do fall in love, I don't think it will be with a young fellow anyway. Boys are pretty near all alike—you go out with them a couple of times, and you know all about them. They're all right to play with—but when a girl really falls in love, it's with a man, not a boy. That's the way it'll he with me, unless I find a boy-man, and they're as scarce as hens' teeth."

Sir William looked at her so long after she had stopped speaking, that Daisy's face, never very long at rest, changed from gravity back to its customary dimpling.

"You'll be sure to know me, anyway, next time you see me, eh?" she said, putting her head on one side.

Ware, still holding her hand, stood up. The napkin slid off his knee to the floor. Daisy, obeying a tidy feminine impulse, stooped over and with her free hand picked the doyley up and laid it on the table. Then she stood erect and bright, facing the baronet at about the level of his chin.

"Little woman," he said, his eyes shining down into hers, "you are jolly well right when you say I shan't forget you; and I want you to believe that I don't intend to forget you—in fact, haven't the slightest intention of forgetting you, or even trying to. Shall you keep on, do you think, in your present position?"

"I guess so," said Daisy, "I like the lady of the house."

"Very fine woman," said Sir William, "very fine, indeed.... Now, I shan't keep you out any longer, as it must be getting late." He relinquished her hand, with a little pat, and reached down his hat and cane.

Sir William walked back with Daisy as far as the Harrison gate. On the way, he said, squeezing the hand that lay within his arm, where he had drawn it as on the previous walk in the opposite direction, "now, you'll keep on being a straightforward and good little woman, won't you? You won't let the city spoil you, I mean—it has a tendency that way, you know."

Daisy smiled up. "Oh, I guess I can take care of myself," she said, "I've had to, all my life." Her companion chuckled at this.

"Might I enquire as to the duration of that immense period of time?" he said.

"You mean, how old am I?" Daisy paused, as they reached the gate, and gently freed her arm. It was as well, she had found in the case of most previous escorts, to be cleared for rapid retreat when the good-bye moment came. It might be as well, in this case too. Men were queer, at the good-bye moment.

"That's it," Sir William said, in reply to her paraphrase of his previous enquiry. He leaned on his cane, as only an Englishman can lean on a cane—almost as though it were a part of him—and, just as she was about to reply, interjected, "wait a bit, though. I believe I should like to have a guess at your age before you tell me. Jolly fun, guessing. Nineteen?"

"Seventeen," said Daisy.

"Dear me!" Ware brought his cane around, stood it before him, and crossed his hands on it. "Shockingly bad guessing. However, I am pleased more than I can say to know that so wise and mature a little woman is only seventeen—the sweetest age of maidenhood. And your name—do you realize we've spent a whole hour or more together, in the most intimate way, and I don't even know your name? If I were to guess at that, I should say 'Daffodil'. You dance so, if you know what I mean."

"Well," she said, "you're not so very far off it. It's Daisy."

"Bravo!" Sir William struck his cane delightedly on the pavement; "I knew—that is, I almost knew—it would be a blossom of some sort. Well, little Daisy of the West," he hooked his cane on his arm, removed his hat, and stepped forward: while Daisy, though tensed into bright vigilance against any momentary irresponsibility of the heady good-bye time, dimpled up in a mischievously tempting way, "you won't forget what we've been talking about—shall you?"

If these words, uttered softly as they were, had been followed by an attempt to take her hand, Daisy would have drawn away. But there was no such movement. Sir William, although he had transferred his hat to the arm that held the cane, merely thrust his free hand into the side-pocket of his coat.

Daisy deepened her smile and raised her face a little more, until the light of the street-lamp was reflected in tiny elfin sparklets in each of her eyes. Her lips drew to red fulness, then parted a little. Her cheeks gathered piquantly. After a moment, her lashes fell and a little hand, with irrepressibly coquettish purpose, wandered out from behind her, felt its way up to the brooch at the breast of her blouse, paused there, then was extended toward Sir William.

The baronet's hand came out of his pocket. It did not meet hers, however. It went up before him, palm outward. He smiled at her over the tips of the fingers in a queer, distant way.

"My dear," he said (and his words were a puzzle to Daisy), "if you were less the woman, I should perhaps like you less. But don't let the thing overpower you."

With this, Sir William Ware set his hat on his head, swung his cane, and flicked a bit of pebble off the pavement.

"Au revoir, little woman," he said, still ignoring the hand she had extended toward him. With this, and raising his hat quietly, he turned and walked away.

Daisy, letting the unreceived hand hang before her, held out and humorously pendent, looked after her vanishing escort contemplatively.

"Hmf!" she said, "no date, no nothing. Oh, well—he'll be back, if," she flushed a little, "if he wasn't fooling. I don't care, anyway."