"She's going to put it up in October, when she goes back to school," said Donald. "Jack, she will hate you if you keep reminding her of her algebra and French."
"Then I'll stop," said I, suddenly conscious what an awful thing it would be if she hated me.
Donald's two pointers came frisking across the lawn from the kennels, and Donald picked up his gun.
"Here we go again," said I. "Donny's going to the coverts after grouse, Walter's going up on the hill with his dust-shot and arsenic, and I'm going across the fields after butterflies. Why the deuce can't we all go together, just for once?"
"And take Sweetheart? She would like it if we all went together," said Walter; "she is tired of seeing Jack net butterflies."
"Collecting birds and shooting grouse are two different things," began Donald. "You spoil my dogs by shooting your confounded owls and humming birds."
"Oh, your precious dogs!" I cried. "Shut up, Donny, and give Sweetheart a good day's tramp. It's a pity if three cousins can't pool their pleasures for once."
"Come on," said Walter, "we'll find Sweetheart. Jack, you get your butterfly togs and come back here."
I nodded, and watched my two cousins sauntering across the lawn--big, clean-cut fellows, resembling each other enough to be brothers instead of cousins.
We all resembled each other more or less, Donald, Walter, and I. As for Sweetheart, she looked like none of us.
It was all very well for her mother to call her Sweetheart, and for her aunts to echo it in chorus, but the time was coming when we saw we should have to stop. A girl of sixteen with such a name is ridiculous, and Sweetheart was nearly seventeen; and her hair was "going up" and her gowns were "coming down" in October.
Her own name was pretty enough. I don't know that I ought to tell it, but I will: it was the same as her mother's. We called her Sweetheart sometimes, sometimes "The Aspen Beauty." Donald had given her that name from a butterfly in my collection, the Vanessa Pandora, commonly known as the Aspen beauty, from its never having been captured in America except in our village of Aspen.
Here, in the north of New York State, we four cousins spent our summers in the family house. There was not much to do in Aspen. We used the links, we galloped over the sandy roads, we also trotted our several hobbies, Donald, Walter, and I. Sweetheart had no hobby; to make up for this, however, she owned a magnificent team of bêtes-noires--Algebra and French.