"We girls all wish we could come over and help hunt

the lost treasure. It must be simply splendid to live in

a house where there's a mystery,-secret passages and

chests of doubloons and all that sort of thing! My!

Squire Glenarm, I suppose you spend all your nights exploring

secret passages."

This free expression of opinion startled me, though

she seemed wholly innocent of impertinence.

"Who says there's any secret about the house?" I demanded.

"Oh, Ferguson, the gardener, and all the girls!"

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"I fear Ferguson is drawing on his imagination."

"Well, all the people in the village think so. I've

heard the candy-shop woman speak of it often."

"She'd better attend to her taffy," I retorted.

"Oh, you mustn't be sensitive about it! All us girls

think it ever so romantic, and we call you sometimes the

lord of the realm, and when we see you walking through

the darkling wood at evenfall we say, 'My lord is brooding

upon the treasure chests.' "

This, delivered in the stilted tone of one who is half-quoting

and half-improvising, was irresistibly funny,

and I laughed with good will.

"I hope you've forgiven me-" I began, kicking the

gate to knock off the snow, and taking the key from my

pocket.

"But I haven't, Mr. Glenarm. Your assumption is,

to say the least, unwarranted,-I got that from a book!"

"It isn't fair for you to know my name and for me not

to know yours," I said leadingly.

"You are perfectly right. You are Mr. John Glenarm

-the gardener told me-and I am just Olivia.

They don't allow me to be called Miss yet. I'm very

young, sir!"

"You've only told me half,"-and I kept my hand on

the closed gate. The snow still fell steadily and the

short afternoon was nearing its close. I did not like to

lose her,-the life, the youth, the mirth for which she

stood. The thought of Glenarm House amid the snow-hung

wood and of the long winter evening that I must

spend alone moved me to delay. Lights already gleamed

in the school-buildings straight before us and the sight

of them smote me with loneliness.

"Olivia Gladys Armstrong," she said, laughing,

brushed past me through the gate and ran lightly over

the snow toward St. Agatha's.




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