Rodney Lawrence decided that he would not stay in his room more than twenty-four hours. Therefore on the following morning he essayed to dress himself, and was much disgusted to find that somehow his head was odd, and that a general stiffness and soreness made him feel as he fancied a man of eighty years must feel.

So he gave up the attempt. He donned a dressing-gown and put himself with some violence on a lounge near the window with a book in his hand. This he did for three consecutive days.

Company had arrived meantime. The young man heard talking and laughing and singing and piano and banjo playing in the house, and apparently all about him.

Once in the forenoon and once in the afternoon Mrs. Ffolliott paid him a short visit. She always told him she was glad to see he was improving, and always asked if he wouldn't like some calf's-foot jelly.

This morning, when she had made her customary visit, he had immediately volunteered this remark:

"Aunt Tishy, I don't want any calf's-foot jelly. I never did like it, and I don't like it now."

The lady had smiled in a somewhat vague manner as she patted the young man's cheek in response. Then she said that Rodney was so fond of his joke.

"I suppose you'll be down-stairs by to-morrow, won't you?" she asked; and this also was her customary question.

Lawrence made an impatient movement. He was fond of Aunt Tishy, but he often wished she were not quite so inconsequent.

"I shall be down as soon as I can, you may be sure of that," he answered. "Are the same people here?"

"Yes, but Mrs. Blair goes this afternoon. Good-by, Rodney dear. I'll send you up a fine dinner."

Then Mrs. Ffolliott walked towards the door. But the young man recalled her.

"Aunt Tishy, where's Leander? He's only been here twice, and he was on the wing then. He isn't entertaining Mrs. Blair and the rest, is he?" "Oh, no." Here Mrs. Ffolliott smiled approbatively, as she often did when her son was mentioned. "Lee says he's in the chaperon business."

"The chaperon business? What on earth does he mean by that?" Lawrence tried to speak amiably.

"Why, he's been boating and cycling with Prudence and Lord Maxwell a good deal."

Lawrence instantly averted his eyes from his companion's face. His voice had a deeper note in it, though it sounded quite indifferent, as he said:

"I didn't know Lord Maxwell was here."

"Oh, yes; that is to say, he isn't here; he is over at the Seaview. He's stopping there, but he has been over here often."

"Oh, he has? And Lee is chaperoning Prudence, is he?"

"That's what he calls it; anyway, Prudence said of course she wasn't going out alone with Lord Maxwell. She said it would bore her to death to go alone with him."

"And so Leander goes to keep her from being bored to death?"

"Yes. She says Leander makes everything amusing." "I wish, then, he'd come and amuse me. I don't have even Lord Maxwell."

"I'll tell Lee. You'll be sure to be down to-morrow, Rodney?"

So Mrs. Ffolliott swept out of the room. Lawrence turned again towards the window, magazine in hand. He seemed to read assiduously; he turned over the leaves regularly; his eyes ran along the lines scrupulously.

Presently there came a soft tap on the door. Lawrence's face brightened; he dropped the book on the floor and rose laboriously. He went to the door and opened it.

Carolyn stood there. She had on a hat and seemed in some haste. She carried a red rose in her hand.

Lawrence seized the hand eagerly. He drew her in and kissed her. She glanced back through the open door along the hall. She blushed delightfully.

"You're not afraid that some one will see me kiss you and thus know that you belong to me?" he asked, banteringly.

"It's too much like a chambermaid to be kissed in the hall," she answered, with a laugh.

"Oh, is it?"

"But I'm not afraid that people will think I belong to you; I'm—" She hesitated so long that Lawrence drew her yet nearer, with a fine disregard of the open door.

"You're what?" he asked.

"I'm proud to be yours."

Here she turned her face away and held up the rose to shield her.

"My darling!" he exclaimed. She glanced at him shyly. It was enchanting to see the lovely face so happy.

"Now I must go," she went on, after a moment. "They're waiting for me. Oh, I wish you were able to come to drive with us! You are truly much better?"

"Truly. I shall surely be out in a day or two. Stay one minute. Why didn't you tell me Lord Maxwell was over at Seaview?"

Carolyn flushed deeply, but she answered, promptly, "Because I thought I wouldn't recall anything disagreeable to you; and I know he must be disagreeable."

"Pshaw! What do I care about him? Why, Carolyn," his voice sinking to a tender intonation, "haven't I got you to think of, to live for, now? What more do I want, and what can hurt me so long as I have you?"

The young man's face was full of a feeling that accorded with his words. "Carolyn!" called her mother from the lower hall.

"Let me see you once more to-day," whispered Lawrence, and then the girl ran down the stairs.

Lawrence hobbled back to his lounge again. He was thinking that he was the luckiest fellow in the world, and why shouldn't he and Carolyn be married in the very early fall, say the first day of September?

He was still thinking this, when a sharp, fine rat-tat on the door made him call out:

"Come in!"

Whereupon the door was opened and shut with great swiftness, and Leander Ffolliott advanced to the lounge.

He was dressed in his suit as a member of the United States Navy, the same habiliments which he wore when we first had the honor of meeting him. He once explained why he liked these "togs" better than anything else he had, better even than the much-abbreviated cycling-suit, in which he looked like a mere atom of humanity. These, he said, were regular trousers; they were not the "darn things that came only to his knees." It will be seen that he was already looking forward to pantaloons.

Leander paused near where Lawrence was lying. He had his hands in his pockets, of course, and he was jingling jackstones industriously.

"Well," he said, "how does it go?"

"It doesn't go at all," was the response. Then Lawrence held out his hand and said, "Shake, old fellow."

The boy extended a hand and grinned appreciatively.

"I s'pose you ain't goin' to be hauled up long?" he asked.

"I don't know. I hear you've got a job. How do you like it?"

"What?"

"Why, being a chaperon."

Leander laughed shortly. He sat down on the edge of a chair.

"I tell you, ain't Prue jolly?" he exclaimed.

"Do you find her so?"

"You bet I do! No end. So does the Britisher."

"The Britisher?"

"Yes, you know,—the lord fellow that's got eyes, but no chin to speak of. You've seen him, ain't you?"

"Never had that pleasure."

"That so? Thought you had. He's in plain sight here a lot." "He hasn't been in plain sight much from this window," said Lawrence.

The boy looked at him keenly. "Got a pain?" he asked.

"No. Why?"

"You spoke so sharp. I s'pose you ache a good deal?"

"Some. Are you always with Maxwell when he comes?"

"Lordy! no, I ain't. In the evening, if he 'n' Prue are walkin' round in the garden, I ain't with 'em then. But I'm along if they ride horseback, or go in the boat,—the Britisher's boat, you know,—or wheelin', and so on. Prue says I make things more interestin'."

"Oh, you go to make things interesting?"

"That's about it."

Leander's shrewd little eyes would roam about the moor and then come back to the face of the man on the lounge. He now added, "But I guess I don't make things as interestin' as Prue does."

"I guess you don't."

"No, you bet. She's a one-er for that, ain't she?" he remarked, with animation.

"Yes, she is."

There was a short silence now, during which Leander took a set of jackstones from his right pocket and began a game on his knee, getting no farther, however, than "two-sers," as his knee was very small.

Lawrence watched him. He was amused and interested. There were many questions he might ask, but he would not interrogate the boy, save in a general way.

"The Britisher never wants to go back to his hotel," at last remarked Leander. "I don't see why he stays at a hotel if he doesn't want to stay. I say, do lords always have that sort of a chin?"

"I don't know."

"And when they come over here, do they always put their wives into some kind of sulphur springs?"

"I don't know."

"'Cause that's where his wife is, in sulphur springs, and it don't do her any good, either."

Lawrence burst into a laugh, and, after staring an instant, Leander joined him shrilly.

After that the conversation turned to other subjects. Leander gave a detailed account of how his nose was finally stopped from bleeding, and informed his friend that, though his mother was scared almost to death, he himself was not in the least alarmed. Having exhausted this subject, he went to the window and immediately cried out, "There's Devil! Do you know what I'm doin' when I ain't chaperonin'?"

No, Lawrence did not know.

"I'm teachin' Devil to carry letters,—just as if he were a carrier-dove, you know." Here he chuckled. "You oughter have heard Flora Blair sing, 'Oh, carry these lines to my lady-love!'"

Leander raised his voice to a high squeak and shut his eyes languishingly as he mimicked the singer. He opened them again and continued:

"She said 'twas an old song, and, oh, wasn't it lovely? Her singin' that made me think of havin' Devil learn, you know. I tie a teenty bit of paper on his leg, and then—oh, I'll tell you all about it some time. Prue's helpin' me. She says it may come handy when one of us is shut up in a dungeon, you know. Don't you think so?"

Lawrence nodded. His mind was hardly following the boy's words now. There was creeping upon him a dull sense of dissatisfaction, he knew not why.

Leander prattled on, the words sounding confusedly in the still room. At last Lawrence's ears caught the sentence, "For Caro wouldn't let Lord Maxwell have the Vireo and take us all down to the Point of Rocks. She was as silly as she could be, but she wouldn't give in. When I asked her afterwards, she said the Vireo shouldn't go out till you were able to sail her."

Lawrence inwardly called himself childish because of the warm glow that came to his heart as he heard.

"Bless her! bless her!" he said to himself. "She cares for me."

In two days more the young man was down-stairs. He still moved rather stiffly, but his face was radiant as he sat on the piazza with Carolyn.

"We're going to have a long morning all by ourselves," said the girl, but she had scarcely spoken when two people came strolling along in the shrubbery at the left of the lawn.

Lawrence did not suppress an exclamation of impatience when Prudence came in sight, followed by a tall man whom Lawrence had not seen.

Prudence hastened forward. She came to Lawrence and held out her hand, looking up at him with a warm glance of delight.

"Welcome, Mr. Lawrence, welcome!" she said, in a low voice.

"Thank you," he responded, somewhat coldly.

"And so you're really better?" "Oh, I'm all right now. I suppose you have all been desolated by my absence."

Lawrence knew that these last words were in very poor taste, but an inexplicable bitterness in his heart made him say them. He tried immediately to laugh them off.

"Oh, yes," returned Prudence, "we have refrained from smiling, all of us, save Leander, who is a heartless wretch."

Then she introduced the two men to each other, and they bowed stiffly, and Lord Maxwell said it must be no end of a bore to be shut up in a room; he had tried it and he knew.

Having said thus much, his lordship turned markedly to Prue. "I say, let's see what's the matter with your wheel. You've forgotten all about it, you know."

As the two walked away, Lawrence avoided looking after them. He turned towards Carolyn, and saw that she had her eyes fixed upon Prue's retreating figure. There was a look of anxiety on her face.

"Oh, I do wish she wouldn't do so!" he exclaimed.

"Do what?"

"Why, go on so with Lord Maxwell. Of course everybody notices it." "And his wife in sulphur springs," laughed Lawrence.

The girl glanced at him quickly, and then laughed.

"That's what Lee told me," Lawrence explained. Then he added, with some edge to his tone, "I suppose no one but an Englishman would have the courage to shave such a chin as he wears. Most of us poor men-folks would let a beard hide that. Why, it makes him look almost imbecile."

And again Lawrence had the unpleasant consciousness that he was speaking childishly.

Carolyn leaned a little towards her companion. She smiled charmingly, as she said, in a bantering tone, "Don't let us care anything about the Maxwell chin."

Then they both laughed.

It was an hour later in the day that Prudence, walking down towards the shore, came upon Lawrence, sitting on the ground, placidly smoking a cigar.

She was alone, and she paused irresolutely, as she saw him.