Sisters | Page 9

you can't wash your hair or do a little ironing without
having Peter under your feet; he borrows money from me; he bullies
Hong about wasting butter--"
"Also you borrow money from me, my child, don't forget that," Peter
interrupted serenely, peeling an apple. "I don't come to see YOU, Alix."
"I have a rope somewhere--" the doctor ruminated. "Where did I put
that long rope--what did I have it for, in the first place--"
"You had it to guy the apple tree," Alix reminded him. "Don't you
remember you got a regular ship's cable to tie that tree, and it never
worked? The tree that died after all--"
"Ah, yes!" said her father, his attentive face brightening. "Ah, yes!
Now WHERE is that rope?" But even as Alix observed that she had
seen it somewhere, and advanced a tentative guess as to the cellar, his
eyes fell upon Cherry, and went from Cherry's absorbed face--for she
was dreaming over her breakfast--to Peter, and he wondered if Peter
HAD kissed her.
"Come on, let's get at it!" Alix exclaimed with relish. She loved a
struggle of any description, had prepared for this one with sleeves
rolled to the elbows, and had put on heavy shoes and her briefest skirt.
"Come on, Sweetums," she added, to the dog, who had somehow

wormed his way into the dining room, and was beating the floor with
an obsequious tail. She caught his forepaws, and he whipped his
beautiful tail between his legs, and looked about with agonized eyes
while she dragged him through a clumsy dance. "He's the darlingest
pup we ever had!" Alix stated to Cherry, who was departing for the
upper regions and a complete costume.
"He needs a bath," Anne observed coldly, and Peter's abrupt shout of
laughter made Alix flush angrily.
"Bring your cigarette out here, Peter," the old doctor said, crossing the
garden to look in the abandoned greenhouse for his rope. "We're in no
hurry," he said. "We may as well wait until Lloyd comes along; the
fellow's arms are like flails. You---" the old man opened a reluctant
door, peered into a glassed space filled with muddy shelves and empty
flower-pots and spiderwebs. "It's not here," he stated. Then he began
again, "You brought Cherry home last night?" he asked.
"As a matter of fact, I didn't," Peter answered, in his quick, precise
tones. "I came with Lloyd and Cherry as far as the bridge, then I cut up
the hill. Why?" he added sharply. "What's up?"
"Nothing's up," Doctor Strickland said slowly. "But I think that Lloyd
admires--or is beginning to admire--her," he said.
"Who--Cherry!" Peter exclaimed, with distaste and incredulity in his
tone.
"You don't think so?" the doctor, looking at him wistfully, asked
eagerly.
"Why, certainly not!" Peter said quickly. "Certainly not," he added,
frowning, with his eyes narrowed, and his look fixed upon the vista of
woodland.
"I had a fancy that he might have been putting notions into her head,"
her father said, anxious to be reassured.

"But--great Scott!" Peter said, his face very red, "she's much younger
than Anne and Alix--"
"It doesn't always go by that," the doctor suggested.
"No, I know it doesn't," Peter answered in his quick, annoyed fashion.
"I should be sorry," Cherry's father admitted.
"Sorry!" Peter echoed impatiently. "But it's quite out of the question, of
course! It's quite out of the question. You mustn't-- we mustn't--let
ourselves get scared about the first man that looks at her. She--she
wouldn't consider him for an instant," he suddenly decided in great
satisfaction. "You mustn't forget that she has something to do with it!
Very fastidious, Cherry. She's not like other girls!"
"That's true--that's true!" Doctor Strickland agreed, in great relief. They
turned back toward the garden, in time to meet Alix and several dogs
streaming across the clearing. Over the girl's shoulder was coiled the
great rope; she leaped various logs and small bushes as she came, and
the dogs barked madly and leaped with her. Breathless, she stumbled
and fell into her father's arms, and both men had the same thought, one
that made them smile upon her tomboyishness indulgently: "If this is
twenty-one-- eighteen is three long years younger and less
responsible!"

CHAPTER II
Immediately they gathered by the fallen rose vine, all talking and
disputing at once. Alix and the dogs added only noise to the confusion;
the men debated, measured, and doubted; Anne, busy with household
duties, came and went smilingly. About them stretched the forest,
wrapped in the summer morning stillness that is really compounded of
a thousand happy sounds. There was no fog now; warm spokes of
sunshine fell brightly into the dim, glowing heart of the woods; bees
and birds murmured on short journeys; aromatic sweetness drifted on

the air.
They