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“I am your cousin Paul,” he said smilingly, “though I am afraid I am introducing myself almost as briefly as your father just now excused himself to me. He told me I would find you here, but he himself was hastening on a Samaritan mission.”

“With a box in his hand?” said the girls simultaneously, exchanging glances with each other again.

“With a box containing some restorative, I think,” responded Paul, a little wonderingly.

“Restorative! So THAT’S what he calls it now, is it?” said one of the girls saucily. “Well, no one knows what’s in the box, though he always carries it with him. Thee never sees him without it”–

“And a roll of paper,” suggested the other girl.

“Yes, a roll of paper–but one never knows what it is!” said the first speaker. “It’s very strange. But no matter now, Paul. Welcome to Hawthorn Hall. I am Jane Bunker, and this is Dorcas.” She stopped, and then, looking down demurely, added, “Thee may kiss us both, cousin Paul.”

The young man did not wait for a second invitation, but gently touched his lips to their soft young cheeks.

“Thee does not speak like an American, Paul. Is thee really and truly one?” continued Jane.

Paul remembered that he had forgotten his dialect, but it was too late now.

“I am really and truly one, and your own cousin, and I hope you will find me a very dear”–

“Oh!” said Dorcas, starting up primly. “You must really allow me to withdraw.” To the young man’s astonishment, she seized her parasol, and, with a youthful affectation of dignity, glided from the summer-house and was lost among the trees.

“Thy declaration to me was rather sudden,” said Jane quietly, in answer to his look of surprise, “and Dorcas is peculiarly sensitive and less like the ‘world’s people’ than I am. And it was just a little cruel, considering that she has loved thee secretly all these years, followed thy fortunes in America with breathless eagerness, thrilled at thy narrow escapes, and wept at thy privations.”

“But she has never seen me before!” said the astounded Paul.

“And thee had never seen me before, and yet thee has dared to propose to me five minutes after thee arrived, and in her presence.”

“But, my dear girl!” expostulated Paul.

“Stand off!” she said, rapidly opening her parasol and interposing it between them. “Another step nearer–ay, even another word of endearment–and I shall be compelled–nay, forced,” she added in a lower voice, “to remove this parasol, lest it should be crushed and ruined!”

“I see,” he said gloomily, “you have been reading novels; but so have I, and the same ones! Nevertheless, I intended only to tell you that I hoped you would always find me a kind friend.”

She shut her parasol up with a snap. “And I only intended to tell thee that my heart was given to another.”

“You INTENDED–and now?”

“Is it the ‘kind friend’ who asks?”

“If it were not?”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!”

“Oh!”

“But thee loves another?” she said, toying with her cup.

He attempted to toy with his, but broke it. A man lacks delicacy in this kind of persiflage. “You mean I am loved by another,” he said bluntly.

“You dare to say that!” she said, flashing, in spite of her prim demeanor.

“No, but YOU did just now! You said your sister loved me!”

“Did I?” she said dreamily. “Dear! dear! That’s the trouble of trying to talk like Mr. Blank’s delightful dialogues. One gets so mixed!”

“Yet you will be a sister to me?” he said. “‘Tis an old American joke, but ’twill serve.”

There was a long silence.

“Had thee not better go to sister Dorcas? She is playing with the cows,” said Jane plaintively.

“You forget,” he returned gravely, “that, on page 27 of the novel we have both read, at this point he is supposed to kiss her.”

She had forgotten, but they both remembered in time. At this moment a scream came faintly from the distance. They both started, and rose.

“It is sister Dorcas,” said Jane, sitting down again and pouring out another cup of tea. “I have always told her that one of those Swiss cows would hook her.”