A

WILD, soft rush as of some one sliding down the baluster-rail, a faint whir as of quail rising from green coverts, a presence not to be ignored in the door

way.

Hobson, taking his afternoon ease on the porch, threw Mrs. Roderick Ivor, his hostess, and third cousin on the mother's side, a glance of pained astonishment as he rose to greet her niece Bina, his fourth cousin, also on the mother's side.

"Why, this is a pleasant surprise, Bina," said Hobson, gloomily. "I thought you would n't be here before August. You've grown a lot. I suppose you still think you want to be a trained nurse, hey?"

Bina was seventeen. She possessed to overflowing all the glow, the color, the music, of that incomparable age. She came forward and put out her hand with a touching mixture of womanly assurance and girlish timidity.

"How do you do, Cousin Hobson?" said Bina, with the utmost propriety.

Hobson proffered his nice, comfortable chair to Bina. He seemed about to cry. He was reflecting on the fact that he, a poor, city-distracted genealogist, had come to Cedarcliff hoping to find there peace and quiet wherein to complete his great work, "The Harrison Family."

"Pen 's crazy to see you, Bina," it came to him to say; "I believe he 's down by the creek hunting you up."

"Oh," cried Bina, eagerly, "did you bring little Pen with you, Cousin Hob?"

She turned her face, brimming with color and light, on them for a brief moment as she ran down the steps. Her smooth hand shone rosy in the sunlight as she flung it up to hail Cousin Hob's little boy.

He came tearing, almost as vivid a thing as Bina herself, all red cheeks,

bronze curls, and naked brown legs and arms. Hobson and Kathy watched him. embracing Bina with rapture, two creatures of deeper kin than that created by simple family ties. After a long moment of suspense for Hobson, little Pen drew Bina toward the creek. She threw them a longing glance as she went. She loved to talk with Cousin Hobson; but how sweetly she went to play with Cousin Hobson's little boy instead!

Hobson grinned, and sank back in his nice, comfortable chair with a sigh of relief mingled with apprehension.

"I'll have your writing things taken to the office," said Bina's thoughtful Aunt Kathy.

"What good would that do?" asked Hobson. Still, he considered the suggestion, and said presently, "Well-suppose you do, Kath."

Kathy said soothingly:

"Poor old Hob! But never mind; she won't be here next summer to upset you." Hobson sat erect.

"Do you mean that her mother has consented to let that child enter a hospital?" Kathy nodded.

"An innocent child-it 's indecent. It should n't be allowed."

"Oh, goodness, Hobson!" cried Kathy.

"MAY I come in?" asked Bina next morning.

Hobson, from his place at Ivor's desk in the ancient, octagonal brick office near the creek, blinked up at the peeping brightness that was Bina's face; then he leaned back and removed his eye-glasses.

"Have you got me in the book?" asked Bina, advancing joyously.

"Could I keep you out of it?" asked Cousin Hobson, with the deadliest pessimism.

"Oh, do show me!" cried Bina. "Do let me see, Cousin Hob!"

With an ill-considered and desperate gesture he snatched pages and pages of his precious "Harrison Family" (his mother had been a Miss Harrison) out of Bina's grasp. She stood still. The suns clouded over in her gray eyes; her eager hands. dropped dead; her color stormed.

Hobson felt like the meanest man he had ever heard of. He pretended to be searching among the sheets he had rescued.

"Here you are," he said, affecting heartiness. "You come in here."

With precision and lucidity he explained the position of the tiny, fluttering leaf which represented Bina on the widespreading Harrison family tree.

"Why don't you let old Hob alone?"

"But I love to talk to persons older than myself," said Bina. "All my best friends are older than myself. My very best girl friend is thirty-six years old."

"I would n't bother Hob too much, though," said Roddy, staring. "He came down here to be quiet, you know, and finish his genealogy."

Roddy's tone evinced that respect for literature, as applied to family history, proper to his twenty years.

"Did you ever know," asked Bina, not appearing to hear a word Roddy said, "that we had a doctor in our family, oh, about two hundred years ago, who kept a private graveyard for his patients?"

"Hob 's stringing you."

"He's not. He showed it to me in the book. It was really all right. Persons came to him in their carriages from a hundred miles around. And when they died, as of course some of them did, he just used to bury them in his graveyard to save their families a whole lot of trouble. You can see for yourself that it would, Roddy-in those days."

"All I say is," said Roddy, "that, relative or no relative, no doctor with a private graveyard could ever have had my patronage.'

Bina continued enthusiastically:

"And we had another doctor, an awfully young one, who cut off a man's leg when there was n't the least need of it just because he was perfectly crazy to try a fine set of instruments he 'd won for a prize. He told the man about it a long time afterward, and they both thought it a great joke."

"I hope," said Roddy, in his best elderbrother manner, "that you did n't think it a great joke, Bina?"

"No-just a 1-little one," murmured Bina, with a deprecating, sidewise glance. She struggled with laughter.

"Bina," said Roddy, -twin elder brothers could not have said it more gravely or affectionately, "you are a splendid girl, but you are too flippant about serious things. things. I don't like it in you." He stooped, picking up a stick and throwing it for the puppy to bring.

Bina appeared rebuffed. They walked along in silence. Presently Roddy looked at her. She met the look with an eager, wistful smile.

"But I've no business preaching to you," said Roddy, coloring a bit. "It 's just because you are splendid, and I think the world of you, that I 've got the nerve to do it." He added, sniffing, "Smells good, does n't it?"

Delectable odors were floating toward them from the kitchen, where Miss Lizzie, the housekeeper at Cedarcliff these twenty years, sampled a kettle of blackberry-jam. Roddy's sister Mary sat in a stately pose on a flour barrel and stirred and stirred.

The sunshine spilled brilliantly on the brass rim of the big kettle and along the freshly scoured white boards of the floor. On a napkin in the window-seat reposed a fresh baking of salt-rising bread.

"No, you don't, darling!" said Roddy. He whisked off the second napkin, which Miss Lizzie was carelessly casting over her baking, and glanced around. "Where 's some butter?"

"Don't be such a kid, Roddy!" said Mary. "That bread is for to-morrow."

"And jam," said Roddy.

"I would n't humor them that way, Miss Lizzie," said Mary.

"There, Honey," said Miss Lizzie to Roddy.

"And do go away with it," said Mary, "before you get crumbs all over the floor." "Murry," said Roddy, "you are getting to be a regular Miss Prim."

"I'd rather be a Miss Prim than a baby," said Mary. She said it with an eye on Bina, who stood munching bread and jam and gazing with absent-minded rapture into the bubbling depths of the kettle. Tiny dark-red craters appeared and disappeared fascinatingly as Mary's stirrer advanced and receded. Faint red reflections glowed and faded. The beautiful odor grew so thick you could have sliced it.

"Let me stir!" begged Bina, suddenly. Mary pretended not to hear.

Bina's warm, insinuating hand curled gently just above Mary's on the long handle of the stirrer.

"Please, Bina!" said Mary, coldly. She, too, glanced imploringly at Roddy; but Mary was not a distracted visiting genealogist. With a wicked grin, Roddy walked off.

"I wish you would n't persist, Bina," said Mary, still more coldly.

"What harm can the child do?" asked Kathy, strolling through on her way in from a morning walk.

There it was again, thought Mary, looking after her vanishing mother. Bina did n't act in the least like company; but if you did n't treat her like company, older persons took that tone with you.

While she thought thus, her hold on the handle involuntarily relaxed, and it was delivered into Bina's hands.

Bina invented a childish dance for herself as she retreated and advanced with the stirrer. She hummed an air to do the dance by.

"If you will stir, Bina," said Mary, "get up on the barrel and stir properly." Bina obediently clambered up on the barrel.

"It's getting thick now," said Mary. "If you stop stirring for a moment it 's liable to burn.”

"Murry," called Roddy from the yard, "Geoff wants you on the 'phone."

Mary blushed slowly and with dignity. "Run along, Mistress Mary," sang Bina.

Miss Lizzie had gone down into the cellar to look up jars, and Mary hated to leave Bina alone with the jam. She moved reluctantly toward the door, looking back the while.

"Bina," she began.

"Murry," mocked Bina.

"All the same," warned Mary, "don't you let anything happen to my jam, Bina Harrison."

Mary was gone for a considerable time. As she hung up the receiver she was aware of a faintly different smell in the air. She stalked to the kitchen, scorning to hurry; besides, the mischief was done.

Bina looked up at Mary like a scared little girl as she stood her ground to be scolded.

"You would be a persistent little fool, Bina," said Mary. There was that in her tone which sent Bina shivering out into the July sunshine.

Later Roddy came on Bina moping in the old school-room in the yard. She leaned her elbows on a scarred deal table, and gazed disconsolately on the cracked and peeling globe which still had place there.

"Oh," said Roddy, "does the world look that bad to her?"

He pushed away the globe, sat on the table edge, and patted her shoulder.

"How did it happen?" he asked in a comforting tone.

"I got to thinking out a patent stirrer," confessed Bina, unhappily; "one you could wind up, and set going while you read. And I guess I must have stopped stirring -for just a minute."

Roddy's head went back. His empty masculine mirth echoed to Mary, very hot just then as she scraped the kettle. What made the whole thing the more inexcusable was that the jam was not really badly burned; just enough to spoil it, that was all. Some persons would have poured it into jars all the same. Mary thanked Heaven she was not one of these. Irked by Roddy's continuing laughter, she looked across the yard to the old school-room, and wondered how a girl could live seventeen years and a boy twenty and yet have as little common sense as Roddy and Bina.

"I SEE father down at the pasture," said Roddy. "Shall we go and have a look at June-bug, too?"

They strolled together to the pasture, where Bina leaned over a bar and made instant friends with June-bug, the little brown mare with the temper.

"I don't believe she 's bad-tempered at all," said Bina. She swung herself up on the bar, and put out a coaxing hand. "Are you so wicked as all that, Junebug?" asked Bina, caressingly.

June-bug appeared to shake her head. She came nearer and nibbled at Bina's pink fingers.

"I don't believe a word of it," said Bina to June-bug. She turned to Roderick Ivor, Sr.

"Oh, Uncle Rod, do let me ride her this evening. See, we 've fallen in love. with each other.".

"Not safe for you," said Ivor. He smiled at her indulgently. Horsemanship was not Bina's chief accomplishment.

"Do take my part, Roddy. See how she loves me."

"Bina," said Roddy, "in every situation. of this sort there should always be at least one disinterested observer-for witness later on." Ivor and Roddy grinned at each other.

"Old Lil 's safer for you," said Ivor.

"I'll tell you what, Uncle Rod," said Bina, not appearing to hear a word Ivor was saying. "Let's get her up to the house, and I'll ride her around the lawn. If she does n't behave, I won't ask you again."

Ivor walked firmly forth from the inclosure.

Roddy watched him with interest, not yet ready to bet on Bina. Ivor certainly looked very determined. Bina said nothing more. ing more. She merely slipped down from the bar, and hung on Uncle Rod's arm, and looked up at him. Bina's eyes were liquid. They pleaded as a baby's might plead for the moon and the eternal stars. And she only wanted to ride a pretty horse instead of an ugly one. It was a desire that seemed reasonable to Ivor, who would not have ridden old Lil himself for five hundred dollars. He looked at June-bug stretching her silken neck after the departing Bina. There they were, lovely feminine creatures imploring a fa

vor.

"What about it, Roddy?" asked Ivor, suddenly.

Roddy turned away to conceal a smile and get a bridle.

Mary and Kathy were on the porch as the small procession approached.

"Papa," cried Mary, incredulously, "you 're not going to let Bina ride Junebug? Why, you would n't let me ride her yesterday."

"Well, they 've taken a shine to each other," said Ivor, placatingly.

Mary presented a severe girlish profile to her father as she walked into the house.

"Mary has entirely too pronounced a manner for so young a person," said he, reprovingly, to Mary's mother.

"Don't take it out on me," said that astonishingly young and pretty lady.

In the enigmatic silence which ensued Bina rode June-bug around the lawn several times with entire success.

A prettier picture than Bina on Junebug, with Roddy guarding at her stirrup, it would be hard to conceive. Ivor's face showed marked patriarchal pride in the girl, the boy, and the brown mare.