"I'd like to talk that over with you sometime soon and get your point of view. Just now I've got to hurry to a business appointment, but I'll see you again. Perhaps you don't remember me, but your sister will tell you who I am."

He waved his hand, for Evelyn had started her engine and drowned out further conversation, and they shot away from the curb.

"Who is the perfectly stunning-looking kid?" asked Evelyn Avery languidly. "One of your former caddies?"

And back on the sidewalk Donald Deane, known among his compatriots as "Donnie" Deane, stood glaring after the fast disappearing car.

"Now what the dickens was that hand-painted girl doing down our respectable street? That was Keith Morrell, wasn't it? Beats all how quick she can hunt 'em out the minute they land in town. Like molasses to the fly! What was he doing here?" He turned and gave his sister a searching look. "Come to borrow a key to get into his house or something?"

"No," said Daphne, watching the distance with a puzzled look in her eyes. "I gathered that he came down to meet his agent, something about a tenant or a possible buyer for the property."

"Good night!" said her brother with dismay in his voice. "Seems sort of awful, doesn't it, after all the way Mother made up fairy tales about the place, to have it pass out of the family that way. Still, I suppose it's what we've got to expect."

"Yes," said Daphne. "It probably looks old-fashioned and uninteresting to one who has spent several years abroad. But, of course, if he had really been the radiant loyal youth we pictured him to be--or rather Mother pictured, we believed--he couldn't do it! He'd have to keep the place for old association's sake."

"Well, he probably isn't what we thought he was!" said Don, frowning heavily and with a sigh of disillusionment. "I wish he'd stayed away. I hate like the dickens to lose a hero. There aren't so many these days! Mother made him out a sort of Sir Galahad, and I've about found out there aren't any more of them, so I hate to see him go."

Daphne laughed.

"It doesn't necessarily mean that he hasn't a fine character, you know, if he has to sell his property. Besides, it may be awfully hard for him to come back to the old home now his father and mother are gone."

Don shook his head.

"I couldn't do it!" he said firmly. "Not if I had to starve to keep it. Look at those lines! Look at those great columns, look at the curve of the porch and the arch of the mullioned window!"

Daphne laughed.

"There's more to it than lines," she said. "You've got architecture on the brain just now, but there's a certain character to that old house that makes it lovely, even if the lines weren't right. There's a family life that was lived there, that I feel somehow will live on in memories. I know it will in mine. Of course, Mother idealized it for us. I've been realizing that for some time. Yet there was something real about it that has grown into our lives, yours and mine, and perhaps the other children's, too, that can never die. Come on, Donnie, let's forget it. We can't do anything about it, and it's not for us to worry about. But I'm glad he liked your playing. Wasn't it nice of him to say so?"

She caught her brother's big hand and nestled her fingers into it affectionately, and together they went into the gate and up the steps of the pleasant white house behind the high hedge that was their home.

Chapter 3

Keith Morrell, as he stepped into the car and took his seat beside Evelyn Avery, had a distinct sense of loss, as if something pleasant that he was about to grasp had been ruthlessly torn from him. He hadn't time to analyze this impression and understand just what it meant. He didn't exactly connect it with Daphne Deane, the almost unknown girl out of a past that had not been conscious of her at all. He simply felt that something sweet and tender connected with his boyhood had touched him and given him a longing for things that were no more, made him almost wonder if such an atmosphere was still upon the earth somewhere.

But there was not time to reason about it.