reading aloud, or I could give you lessons in knitting and crochet...”

Darsie laughed, a bright, audacious laugh.

“I wouldn’t like it a bit! I’ve another plan to suggest, fifty times nicer and more exciting. Suppose,”—she leaned her arms on the old lady’s knee and looked gaily into her spectacled eyes—“suppose, instead of your trying to make me old with you, I tried, for a time, to make you young with me? Eh? What do you think? Wouldn’t it be far more fun!”

“You ridiculous child!” But Lady Hayes laughed in her turn, and showed no signs of dismay. “That would be too difficult an undertaking even for you. To make me young again, ah, Darsie! that’s an impossible task.”

“Not a whit more impossible than to make me old!” cried Darsie quickly. “Suppose we took turns? That would be only fair. Your day first, when you would read aloud dull books with the blinds half down; and then my day, when I’d read funny ones, with the blinds drawn up to the top, and the sun streaming into the room; your day, when we drove the ordinary round and came back to lunch; and mine when we went away over the hill and took a picnic basket and drew up at the side of the road, and ate it, and got milk from a cottage and drank it out of cups without saucers! Your night, when we played Patience; and mine when I showed you tricks and danced figure dances as we do at school. I’m sure you’d like to see me dance the Highland fling! Now—now—promise! I know you’ll promise. I can see the softening in your eye!”

“Ridiculous child!” protested Lady Hayes once more, but Darsie was right; there was certainly a softening in her eye which bespoke a disposition to yield. In truth it was not so much of Darsie as of herself that Lady Hayes was thinking at that moment, for as the young voice spoke the old heart quickened with quite an agreeable sense of expectation. Years since she had read a “funny book,” years since she had partaken of a picnic meal; years—many, many years since she had looked on while a young girl danced! Radical changes and innovations in the routine of life she could not face at this late day, but Darsie’s girlish plan attempted nothing so ambitious. Let the child have her way! It would be interesting, undoubtedly interesting, to see how she behaved.

So Darsie gained her point, and for the next week she and her hostess played in turn the part of Mistress of the Ceremonies, to their mutual benefit and satisfaction.

Chapter Eleven.

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