"Hush!" exclaimed Katie, "hush! come this way. Look through the lattice. Look through the wire fence just here. Can you see? There's Fluff, and there's her lover. He's rather old, isn't he? But hasn't he _l'air distingué_? Isn't Fluff pretty when she blushes? The lover is rather tall. Oh, do look, Mary, can you see--can you see?"
"Yes, he has fair hair," responded Mary. "It curls. I'm sorry it is fair and curly, for Fluff's is the same. He should be dark, like a Spaniard. Oh, girls, girls, he has got such lovely blue eyes, and such white teeth! He smiled just now, and I saw them."
"Let me peep," said Marion. "I haven't got one peep yet."
But here the voices became a little loud, and the lovers, if they were lovers, passed out of sight behind the yew hedge.
"That's it," said Fluff when she had finished her story; "it's all explained now. I hope you're obliged to me."
"No brother could love you better, nor appreciate you more than I do, Fluff."
"Thank you; I'll tell you how much I care for those words when you let me know what you are going to do."
Arnold put his hand to his forehead; his face grew grave, he looked with an earnest, half-puzzled glance at the childish creature by his side.
"I really think you are the best girl in the world, and one of the cleverest," he said. "I have a feeling that you have an idea in your head, but I am sorry to say nothing very hopeful up to the present time has occurred to me. It does seem possible, after your explanation, that Frances may love me, and yet refuse me; yes, certainly, that does now seem possible."
"How foolish you are to speak in that doubting tone," half snapped Fluff (certainly, if the girls had seen her now they would have thought she was quarreling with her lover). "How can you say perhaps Frances loves you? Loves you! She is breaking her heart for you. Oh! I could cry when I think of Frances's pain!"
"Dear little friend!" said Arnold. "Then if that is so--God grant it, oh, God grant it--Frances and I must turn to you to help us."
"I will tell you my plan," she said. "But first of all you must answer me a question."
"Oh, well, Philip--I rather like the name of Philip--Philip, are you a rich man?"
"That depends on what you call riches, Fluff. I have brought fifteen thousand pounds with me from the other side of the world. I took five years earning it, for all those five years I lived as a very poor man, I was adding penny to penny, and pound to pound, to Frances's fortune."