"That will do," he called to them presently, and Bina trotted up, glowing like a rose in full sunshine.

"Still," said Ivor, "I think I'll escort you myself this evening, Bina."

OVER the red road through the green hills rode Bina and Ivor. To an observer from a point of vantage the July sun would have turned Ivor's white flannels into silver and Bina's gray habit to a rich purple, and have set both figures, on their little black shapes of horses, as sharply against the strange, scarlet effect of the road as if they had been but cut-out paper dolls. To such an observer it would have seemed odd and pretty to see them moving rapidly along through the many-shaded green of wood and field.

But to themselves Bina and Ivor appeared life-size, and each the center of a universe.

"Oh," exclaimed Bina, "do see those early black-eyed Susans!"

She whisked June-bug into a fence-corner, and half rose in her stirrup to get a better view of the creek-bank of blackeyed Susans.

"Look out!" shouted Ivor.

He wheeled his beautiful Bon away from June-bug's wicked newly shod little heels, but not quite in time.

Bina gazed dismayed at an ugly gash on Bon's ebony foreleg, from which blood was welling slowly. Ivor dismounted, and swore not altogether beneath his breath.

"It's back home for you, Bina," he said grimly.

Bon, out of pure malice, it seemed to Bina, presently began to limp. Ivor got off and led him. Bina drooped after. As they came up the lawn, Mary, at her window, took them in ironically.

Ivor jumped Bina to the ground and led Bon stableward. Bina followed unnoticed, and stood at the stable doorway watching Ivor as he tended the wound. "I'm so sorry about it," she said. "It was my fault," said Ivor, glancing up. "I'd no business trusting that little devil. Don't you bother, child."

She stepped forward, uttering a cry.

"It looks ugly, of course; but just so it does n't leave a scar-run along, Bina." He began winding a bandage in what seemed a fearfully fumbling way to the future trained nurse. Her fingers reached

out of their own volition.

"Do let me do that for you, Uncle Roderick!" she pleaded passionately.

She had actually laid a hand on Bon's wincing foreleg when Ivor, pale with impatience, took her firmly by the shoulders and faced her toward the house.

"Bina," he said, "don't be a persistent little fool."

BINA was extremely subdued for several days. She wore a meek, blue lawn dress with wide, white Priscilla collar, and did crochet-work. One afternoon she sat on the porch steps with little Pen and Roddy. Little Pen blew at a blue balloon until his red-brown cheeks looked like the cheeks of a portly cherub. Bina listened dreamily to Cousin Polly Winston, who had driven over that morning, and who was conversing with Cousin Hobson on his favorite subject. Cousin Polly was a leftover in the refrigerator of Life. Life did not like to throw her away, but did n't in the least know what to do with her. Her parted hair was the neatest thing in the county, and her spine the straightest, and she considered every reference to reality to be unrefined, if not improper. She was precisely the person to be interesting to a genealogist, and Cousin Hob was having a good time.

"She comes in?" he asked in an excited

tone.

"She was your Step-aunt Sarah's first cousin on her father's side; not your Stepaunt Sarah Dallas, Hobson, but your Step-aunt Sarah Aftonbury."

Hobson's face lighted. It seemed illuminating to him. But Roddy, though, as has been indicated, respecting his forebears, jumped up somewhat abruptly and strolled stableward. Bina felt deserted. She seized the blue balloon, now expanded to unbelievable proportions, and tossed it after Roddy. Whirling about, he tossed it back. Spang! Bina sent it soaring, mid

night blue against a pale-blue sky. It hovered among the branches of a young maple for a breathless moment before Roddy, with a beautiful leap into the air, had it back to Bina. The little blue dress, no longer meek, swirled about Bina as she ran out on the lawn with the blue balloon held high in air for a toss.

All this time the experienced little Pen was tugging at her skirts and shrieking:

"Give it back to me! You'll burst it. You hit it too hard. Oh, I want my balloon, Bina! You and Roddy will burst. my balloon, Bina!"

Snap!

He stooped, weeping bitterly, and picked up a scrap of black rubber from the grass at Bina's feet. Bina swooped to him with open arms.

"O Pen, I'm so sorry! I would n't have broken it for anything-not for anything."

"You would play with it!" wailed Pen, loudly. He pulled away from Bina.

Roddy grinned. Little Pen was only five. He did the best he could with his limited vocabulary; but, oh, how the poor child needed a word of three syllables just then! "Stop that howling, son!" called the annoyed Hobson.

"Bina broke my balloon," shrilled little Pen.

"Well, what if she did?" said Hobson, heartlessly, and went on tossing his own apparently unexplodable old balloon for Cousin Polly's return. Little Pen subsided into low, but sustained, laments. "Stow it, Pen!" said Roddy. "I'll bring you a pocketful of balloons when I go to town Thursday."

The pocketful of balloons could not have seemed farther away to little Pen if Halley's Comet had promised to bring them the next time it came around. He flung himself to the ground and sobbed in the most terrific hopelessness.

With a glance at Bina's stricken face, Roddy continued his interrupted progress stableward.

"Where you going?" asked Ivor, meeting him near the river-landing some fifteen minutes later.

Roddy looked funnily self-conscious.
"Oh, across," he said.

"Girl?" queried Ivor, teasingly. He liked to see the big boy blush. But this time Roddy merely looked a bit annoyed. Then he smiled back.

"Yes," he said. Ivor reined in his horse for a moment that he might enjoy the splendid sight of Roddy riding on.

Roddy did not get back until after one. "See here, you," Ivor hailed him from his room off the back porch-"you be in by twelve after this." His tone was sharp.

"Sorry, sir," said Roddy. "All right, sir." He came on in and talked a bit, to show that he was n't sulky about being called down. When he continued up-stairs he paused half-way down the hall and produced from his pocket a small packet, which he hung like a May-basket to Bina's door-knob.

He descended rather late next morning to find the breakfast-table deserted. Outside, Pen played gloriously with a scarlet balloon; within, Bina ran and hugged Roddy.

"You 're choking me," said Roddy. "Do you suppose there are any hot biscuits in the kitchen, Bina?"

Mary glanced up from her sewing as Bina ran off to see.

"You spoil those children dreadfully, Roddy," said Mary. "I never heard of anything so ridiculous as riding twenty miles to buy a toy balloon."

"Piffle!" said Roddy, blushing violently. The parlors were also in party trim. A crowd of youngsters was due for a dance. Geoff's call had already echoed across the ferry.

"Roddy 's scrumptious," said Bina. She did the newest dance-step known in her far-away home town as she approached the two. "And so are you, Mary."

Mary gave her an indulgent smile, examining her appearance the while.

Bina held out her soft white skirts to show herself off the better. She was as brilliant as the rose-flushed moon of the poets emerging from silver river mists. All her edges were filmy ruffles.

"Run up and ask mama to fasten those folds on the shoulder with her pearl pin," said Mary. She added, being in at normal girlish humor over the dance, "You look good enough to eat, Bina."

"You look good enough to kiss," said Bina. She gave Mary a headlong embrace and ran up-stairs.

"Shut the door, darling," said Kathy. "How sweet you are to-night!"

"Mary said to fasten these folds with your pearl pin, Aunt Kathy." As she spoke, Bina took up a trinket from the dressing-table and tried it against her folds, peeping around Kathy in the pierglass. "How would this do?"

vexedly, listening to Bina's soft downward rush.

It was an extremely young crowd. Toward midnight they thought it would be a lark to go down to the island and pretend to raid Roddy's melon-patch.

It must have been in the sand of the island that Bina lost Kathy's beautiful heirloom brooch.

At dawn Roddy and Bina went back and searched until breakfast-time, but Hebe and her god had apparently vanished away forever. After breakfast Kathy hunted with Roddy. She was particularly fond of that cameo for a dozen good reasons. When Kathy, too, gave it

up and returned to the house, Bina watched for them, unseen in a porch cor

ner.

"It 's too bad," Roddy was saying as they slowly mounted the steps.

"It would never have happened," answered Kathy, almost vindictively, "if Bina had not been a persistent little fool." She went on in, not noticing that Bina was there. But Roddy deflected his course toward the corner. Bina was hiding hér eyes in the crook of her elbow and wetting her little pink gingham sleeve with bitter. Somehow she minded Aunt Kathy more than any one else. "Everybody calls me that," said Bina,

She

It was a fine old cameo, a wedding gift to Kathy's mother, a delicious Hebe offering a vine-garlanded cup to an entrancing young god. Holding it to her shoulder, Bina turned her head sidewise. looked the loveliest of little Greeks. "It just suits," she yearned. "I'd hate to have it lost," objected Kathy, seeking in vain for the pearl pin. "Where can it have got to?" she wondered. "Yes, that suits you, Bina-if only the catch were safe."

"Darling, sweet Aunt Kath, do let me wear it!" begged Bina, dancing out of the room. "I'll be so careful. I'll think of it every single minute." She called this last from the hall.

"Oh, well," said Kathy. She smiled

"I don't call you that," consoled Roddy. "But you will," sobbed Bina. A tearing burst of tears ended speech on her part.

"You be in by sunset with your cousin," said Ivor to Roddy.

"Sure," said Roddy. He gave a final pull to the strap which fastened the lunchbasket to his saddle-bow and called, "Come along, Bina."

They rode off smartly. Morning rides. were tremendously becoming to the two. They lighted Roddy up until he made one think of the line,

And Phoebus 'gins arise,

and they set Bina's rich hair rioting and her eyes shining with some special joy of life.

She halted her mare in the mountain creek, where it was wide and shallow and musical over many-toned stones.

"I feel good as an angel this morning," said Bina.

Roddy felt that way himself, only, being a boy, he was n't so frank about it.

"But we must n't loaf too long," he said, breaking the heavenly silence.

Hanging Rock was truly a place to go to see. The mountain came together as sharply as a shingle roof, with one edge overlapping a lot. Hanging Rock itself overlapped amazingly. You jumped to it across a narrow chasm, and had the thrill of risking your life every time you did it. But risking their lives at Hanging Rock was so old a story to the county people that they made nothing of it. Bina and Roddy sprang lightly over the chasm, splashing up the water in the natural bird fountain hollowed out in the top of the rock by the ages and the ages, and poised carelessly where a misstep would have landed them a mile below on the top of a pine forest, and said how pretty the green-plaided landscape was, and pointed out to each other the houses they recognized-houses which looked near enough to be picked up and small enough to be carried home in Roddy's pocket.

Bina drew her deepest breath yet. "O Roddy, would n't you just love to live up here?"

"I'd just love to have something to eat," teased Roddy.

Roddy's watch had provokingly stopped, and they got started home a trifle late on that account. Bina continued as good as an angel until, one third of the way down, she insisted on exploring an unfamiliar road. She danced her impish little Dolly mare just ahead of Roddy's heavier mount. He reached forth a restraining hand, and Dolly broke into a lope. Now Dolly ran if she thought another horse was trying to catch up with her, and horsemanship was not Bina's strong point. Roddy was afraid to pursue. He followed in angry, sober-gaited silence. It is astonishing how time flies in these fooleries. When Bina tired of mocking at Roddy it really was

late. The road had long since ended. It was not even a path now, or, rather, there were multitudinous paths stretching in every direction. A cloud-shadow menaced the forest. Faint thunders reverberated. Bina and Roddy gazed at each other.

"I've not the least idea where we are," said Roddy. He added coldly, "I hope it's not anywhere near the Drop."

To ride over the Drop would be not unlike riding off Hanging Rock. Bina gazed fearfully about her.

One

"I'd better lead the horses," said Roddy, peering into the darkening woods, trying to get the right direction. might wander all night among those folded ridges rippling along the backbone of the mountain. They wandered until ten o'clock or thereabout, Roddy guessed. It was pitch dark, a cloudy dark without stars, when he halted and looked back at the blur that was Bina on Dolly.

"We'll have to camp for the rest of the night," said Roddy. He said it with careful kindness of manner, but if he had known the truth about Bina he might not have been so considerate. Bina had always wanted to spend a night in the mountains. under thrilling conditions. Despite her conscious guilt, she could not help humming happily as she helped gather twigs for a fire. When it blazed up, she sat by it and thought contentedly that it would n't be daylight for hours and hours. And she had all that time, with the romantic, leaf-embroidered darkness clasping them about, in which to have a confidential talk with Roddy. She meant to tell him of her ambitions, meant to listen to his. Perhaps he would even confide in her concerning the beautiful Miss Marye, who had treated him so badly the summer before; she had had hints here and there as she hovered on the edges of family conclaves. She glanced across the firelit space at Roddy, clasping his knees and staring off into the forest. It might have been a mere effect of light, but she had never before noticed how much alike Roddy and Mary really were.

"Roddy," she began timidly.