he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.
“Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is enough.”
“Is it Miss Fairchild?” queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his shoulder.
She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. “What Miss Stuyvesant declares to be true, that am I bound to believe,” said she, and with the least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.
“It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers,” Cicely presently remarked with an air of great gravity.
Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. “I did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two,” said she, fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. “Such cheerfulness is infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed in sunshine.”
Cicely’s eyes flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in earnest. “ Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion,” observed she; “a room is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the responsibilities of his position. The sunshine is the result of a good heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose.”
“Let us canter,” said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had reached one of those places where the foot