C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

“ It's only men she wants to make propose to her that she cares to bring here, he told mama. They can't resist, it seems. I was going to make a doll of you, but now you're so mean, I won't!”
“Make a doll of me?” helplessly echoed Forrest.
He felt hypnotized. The doll stage was perhaps the next.
“Yes. You see, I have plays with real people in them. I dress dolls, and name them after girls and their lovers. I've got a Lady Brinnie doll, and she makes a splendid play; only it's difficult because of all the men that must be in it for her, and they're so awf'lly troublesome to dress. ”

“ Miss May Corlett, now introduced, defended herself plaintively; “but plagues are in the Bible. There were ten, and it's wicked to poke fun at the Bible. I think you're very rude, too! At home, when I'm with aunty, lots of men make friends with me, and I'm not used to their being cross. I was real nice to you, telling you Brinnie wouldn't refuse you like she has the rest that she brings to the love trees when she wants them to speak—”
“Speak!” groaned Forrest. “You'd think we were dogs!” ”

“ Having accomplished his painful duty, William left without delay, bearing the message that her ladyship would “come at once.”
The two in the temple were conscious that the emerald walls of the sylvan shrine had been cracked and flawed. Forrest felt as much dampened in spirit as if William had poured the tea down the back of his neck, but Lady Brinnie was busy making the best of things.
“I'll give you your tea before I go, shall I?” she said brightly. “Help me out of the hammock. Thanks so much! I remember you like one small lump, and lots of cream. Oh, my favorite strawberry tartlets! ”

“ Bad little thing, go home!” snarled Forrest.
“I won't go home. Riverest isn't yours! I liked your looks at first, but now I don't think you're nice at all. I think you're horrid. You're not half as handsome as heaps of Brinnie's other men that she has to refuse. It's only because you're so rich. You're a millionaire. I heard mama and papa talking about you. They knew you were coming, and your name, and everything. Mama said to papa, 'I wonder if Lady Brinnie will need to lead him under the love trees!' And papa laughed. ”

“ JOE FORREST had spent three days at Riverest, and had not yet proposed to Lady Brinnie Saville. He had arrived on Saturday in time for tea—every one arrived at Riverest in time for tea—without the slightest intention of proposing. He knew his value, of course; but it wasn't that. The reason was purely and simply that the idea of proposing had never entered his head.
There were lots of pretty girls in the world. ”

“ Do you want two, or can I have one?”
“You can have one, and then perhaps you'd better go home,” said Joe, reverting to the hammock. “Your mother may be worrying about you.”
“My mother never worries about me,” the creature reassured him, her mouth already full of strawberry tartlet. “She's got a whole lot of other things to do. Besides, she knows I like to come over here. I come 'most every afternoon, except when Brinnie brings her gentlemen friends to propose to her. But that's fun, too; because I lie in the punt close under the bank and listen. ”

“ May finished the second tartlet; then, without seeming to know what she did, she took up the third and bit it.
“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Joe.
Miss Corlett ate daintily all 'round the edge of the tartlet, leaving the best part—the strawberry-filled middle—for the last.
“You said you didn't want to hear anything more about my aunty,” she mumbled.
“Well, I've changed my mind.”
“I thought only girls changed their minds. Nurse says so.”
“Nurse isn't quite right. Men change theirs sometimes. Come now, what's your aunty's name?” ”

“ Well, there's no knowing what I may do, if you don't look out,” threatened Forrest.
“Pshaw, I'm not afraid!” sniffed the child. “Big men don't hit little girls. It's not polite. I haven't done any harm.”
She finished the tartlet, and wistfully regarded the larger one of the two reserved for Lady Brinnie.
“Don't you call it harm to listen to other people's secrets and tell tales on them?” demanded Joe. “Where were you brought up?” ”

“ Then we had Riverholme letted to us, because mama's very pretty, and wants to be in English society and go to court. I'm not bad at all, and I won't let you say so. It isn't true I listen to people's secrets, or tell tales. It's not a secret when a man proposes to a girl—anyway, not when he proposes to Brinnie. ”

“ Children have to learn. When I get proposed to, I shall tell every one, the way Brinnie does. She loves proposals, though she gen'ally has to say no, because the man's too poor; and you must have money or you're nobody at all. We've got plenty. Brinnie hasn't. ”

“ With lumps of sugar on their noses. 'Speak' is such a funny word to use about men, as if they were dumb the rest of the time—which of course they're not, though I find they don't talk as much as girls. ”

“ She had been charming in the punt, alluring in the part of Diana fresh from the bath; but here she was not to be resisted. Fate handed him to her, with all he was and had.
III
“Riverest belongs to my father, you know,” the girl was saying when the man got his hearing back, “though we're too poor to live in the dear place. Generations ago—oh, perhaps in my great-grandfather's time, when it was the fashion to know about mythology and the classics and that sort of thing—somebody named these two trees Baucis and Philemon. ”