Alpha Book

"So you've bewitched Eileen, too, have you?" she said tenderly. "Isn't
she the sweetest little thing?"
"She's--ah--as tall as I am," he said, blinking at the fire.
"She's only nineteen; pathetically unspoiled--a perfect dear. Men are
going to rave over her and--_not_ spoil her. Did you ever see such
hair?--that thick, ruddy, lustrous, copper tint?--and sometimes it's
like gold afire. And a skin like snow and peaches!--she's sound to the
core. I've had her exercised and groomed and hardened and trained from
the very beginning--every inch of her minutely cared for exactly like my
own babies. I've done my best," she concluded with a satisfied sigh, and
dropped into a chair beside her brother.
"Thoroughbred," commented Selwyn, "to be turned out to-night. Is she
bridle-wise and intelligent?"
"More than sufficiently. That's one trouble--she's had, at times, a
depressing, sponge-like desire for absorbing all sorts of irrelevant
things that no girl ought to concern herself with.


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