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Of the girl cousins David was loftily tolerant, excepting Caro Wrenn. She was five years old the spring we came back to the country, when David was half-past nine. Her mother had died when she was born, and her father, Billy Wrenn, had gone to Colorado three years afterward, to die there of consumption. He made Cousin Chad Caro’s guardian before he died, knowing, as we all did, Cousin Chad’s remarkable ability in reaping financial harvests from even the smallest investments; but he left the child herself with her mother’s sister, Sally Martin, never dreaming that death would again bereave the little creature of a mother’s love. Sally died, quite suddenly, less than a year after Billy; and Cousin Chad and Cousin Jane, intent, as usual, on doing their impeccable duty, assumed sole care of the little heiress, and installed her in their own childless and virtuous home.

A more incongruous setting for her could scarcely have been found. She was a tiny creature, with rose-leaf skin, great hazel eyes, a mop of red-brown curls, and a mouth where laughter bubbled all day long. Quick and bird-like in all her movements, she flitted in and out of the most unexpected recesses in the twinkling of an eye, with endless flutterings of hands and skirts and sweet gurglings of suppressed laughter. Almost from her cradle she sang—queer little soft croonings which slipped into tunes before she could speak their words. Cousin Jane scarcely knew what to make of her, and was torn between a sincere desire to do her Spartanly-Christian duty by her, and her solemn puzzlement over what she considered the child’s combination of depravity and charm. Even Cousin Jane could not be very severe with her; but she had an uneasy sense of spoiling her every time she forebore the rod, so that I found her more than willing to turn the child over to me for the greater part of the time.