Page:Ballinger Price--The Happy Venture.djvu/114

98 of his kindred," she added mischievously.

"Cut it!" muttered Ken; but she took it to mean the cake, and handed him a delicious slice.

"All right," said Ken. "Let's feast. But don't be like the girl with the pitcher of milk on her head, Phil."

If you suppose that Miss Felicia Sturgis was lonely while her brother, the captain, was carrying on his new watery profession, you are quite mistaken. She hadn't time even to reﬂect whether she was lonely or not. She had no intention of letting Applegate Farm sink back to the untidy level of neglect in which she had found it, and its needs claimed much of her energy. She tried to ﬁnd time in which to read a little, for she felt somewhat guilty about the unceremonious leave she had taken of her schooling. And there was cookery to practise, and stockings to mend, and, oh dear, such a number of things!

But Kirk's education filled the most important place, to her, in the scheme of things at Asquam. If she had not been so young, and so ambitious, and so inexperienced, she might have faltered before the task she set herself,