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Copyright, 1920, by
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America
TO FEATHERS
CHAPTER I
"Ah, then, was it all spring weather?
Nay! but we were young—and together."
SHE had always adored him. From the first moment he came to thehouse—an overgrown, good-looking schoolboy, and had started tobully and domineer over her, Marie Chester had thought him the mostwonderful person in all the world. She waited on him hand and foot,she was his willing bondslave; she did not mind at all when once,in an unusual fit of eloquence, she had confided in him that shethought it was the loveliest thing on earth to have a brother,young Christopher answered almost brutally that she "talked rot,anyway, and that sisters were a bally nuisance!"
He looked at her with a sort of contempt for a moment, then added:"Besides, we're not brother and sister, really!"
They were not; but their fathers had been lifelong friends, andwhen George Chester's wife inconsiderately—or so her husbandthought—died without presenting him with a son, and almost at thesame time young Christopher Lawless was left an orphan, GeorgeChester promptly adopted him.
"It will do Marie good to have a brother," he maintained, when hissister. Miss Chester, who kept house for him, raised an objection."She's spoilt—shockingly spoilt—and a boy about the place willknock off some of her airs and graces."
Young Christopher certainly did that much, if no more, for in afortnight he had turned Marie, who was naturally rather shy andreserved, into a tomboy who climbed trees with him regardless of2injury to life and limb, who rode a cob barebacked round thepaddock, who did, in fact, everything he dared or ordered her todo.
Miss Chester protested to Marie's father in vain.
"Christopher is ruining her; I can do nothing with her now! She isquite a different child since he came to the house."
Marie's father chuckled. He was not a particularly refined man, and