Sisters | Page 6

"But
there must be some fire where there's so much smoke!" she ended.
"You're not sure, my dear?" he asked, after some thought.
"Oh, no!" she answered. "It's just a fancy that persists in coming and
going. You know, Uncle Lee," Anne pursued, confidentially, "I've
always had rather a high ideal of marriage. I've always said that the
man I would marry must be a big man--oh, I don't mean only physically!
I mean morally, mentally--a man among men!"
"And you think young Lloyd--answers that description, eh?"
"I think he does, Uncle Lee," she answered seriously. And immediately
afterward she got to her feet, saying brightly, "Well! we mustn't take
this too gravely--yet. It was only that I wanted to be open and
above-board with you, Uncle, from the beginning. That's the only
honest way."
"That's wise and right!" her uncle answered, in the kindly, absent tone
he had used to them as children, a tone he was apt to use to Anne when
she was in her highest mood, and one she rather resented.
"Cherry, now--" he asked, detaining her for a moment. "She--you don't
think that perhaps Peter admires her?"
"PETER!" Anne echoed amazedly, and stood thinking.
Peter was more than thirty years old, thin, scholarly, something of a
solitary, the sweet, dreamy, affectionate neighbour who had shared the
girls' lives for the past ten years. Cherry had bullied Peter since her
babyhood, ruined his piano with sticky fingers, trampled his rose-beds,
coaxed him into asking her father to let her sit up for dinner. For some
reason she could not, or would not, define, Anne liked the idea of

Cherry and Peter falling in love--
"Somehow one doesn't think of Peter as marrying any one--" she said
slowly, still trying to grasp the thought. "He's so--self- sufficient," she
added, shaking her head. "You--you WOULDN'T like that, Uncle?"
"Peter is a dear fellow," the doctor mused. "But Cherry--why, she's
barely eighteen! He--" The old man hesitated, began again: "I suppose
there's no reason why Peter shouldn't kiss her, in a-- brotherly sort of
way?" he submitted doubtfully.
"Did he kiss her?" Anne exclaimed.
"I don't know that he did," Cherry's father said hastily.
"But what made you think he did?" the girl persisted.
"Just a fancy," he assured her. "Just an old father's fear that she is
growing up too fast!"
"Because we all, and you especially, spoil her," Anne reminded him,
smiling. "Peter," she added thoughtfully, "has kissed us all, now and
then!" She stooped for a dutiful good-night kiss, and was gone. And as
she went, lightly and swiftly across the hall, up the stairway with her
shoulders erect, and methodically and prettily moved about her
brushing and folding and disrobing, she saw herself engaged to be
married, saw herself veiled and mystical in white, on her Uncle's arm,
heard the old neighbours and friends saying that little Anne Strickland
had gone to her own home, and had won the love of a fine man.
Downstairs, the doctor sat on, thinking, and his face was grave. He was
thinking of little Cherry's goodnight kiss, half an hour ago. She had
rested against his arm, and he had held her there, but what had been the
thoughts behind the blue eyes so near his own? Perhaps Anne was
right--perhaps Anne was right. But he realized with a great rush of fear
that some man had kissed Cherry to-night, had held her against a
tobacco-scented coat, and that the girl was a woman, and an awakened
woman at that. Cherry-- kissed a man! Her father's heart winced away

from the thought.
Young Lloyd and Peter had walked home with her. But if Anne was
right in her maidenly suspicions of Lloyd's intentions, then it must have
been Peter who surprised little Cherry with a sudden embrace. Lloyd
had been hurrying for a train, too; the case looked clear for Peter.
And as he came to his conclusions, a certain relief crept into the old
man's heart. Peter was an odd fellow; he was ten years too old for the
child. But Peter was a lover of books and gardens and woods and music,
after all, and Peter's father and this old man musing by the fire had been
"Lee" and "Paul" to each other since boyhood. Peter might give Cherry
a kiss as innocently as a brother; in any case, Peter would wait for her,
would be all consideration and tenderness when he did win her.
"But I think perhaps she might go down to the San Jose school for half
a term," her father reflected. "Six months there did wonders for Alix.
No use precipitating things--the next few years are pretty important for
all the girls. We mustn't let her fancy that the first man who turns her
head