Chapter I: "But, Miss Bessie--"

"I have told you a dozen times, Mr. Granton, that my name is not Bessie. I abhor that final _ie_; and more than that, I was christened Betty,--plain Betty,--and Betty I will be."

"Miss Betty, then, if that suits you; though why you should be so particular about that old-fashioned name, I'm sure I can't conceive."

"In the first place, it is my name," Betty replied, bending upon him a glance at once bewitching and tantalizing; "that ought to count for something; and in the second place, my family name isn't one that lends itself to soft prefixes. Besides all which, there has been a Betty Mork from time immemorial; and I shall never be one to spoil the line by changing my name."

"What?" Mr. Granton demanded mischievously. "Never change it? Are you vowed to eternal single blessedness, then, or shall you imitate the women's-rights women, who--"

"It is really none of your affair what I intend to do," returned she, bridling; "only, to go back to what we started on, I do intend to play in the tournament with Frank Bradford. I am not in the habit of breaking my promises."

The pair walked along the shady country road without speaking for a moment or two, the young man inclined to be sulky, his companion saucy and good-natured. The dropping sunshine, falling through the gently waving elm-boughs, struck golden lights out of Miss Mork's abundant chestnut hair,--her one beauty, it amused her to call it, although the smile which brought out her dimples and the lustre of her eyes contradicted the words even while they were being spoken. Young Granton was fully alive to the attractiveness of the lithe figure beside him; indeed, for his own peace of mind, far too keenly. He was aware, too, of the difficulty of managing the wilful beauty, whose independence was sufficiently understood by all the summer idlers at Maugus.

"But you certainly knew I expected you to play in the tournament with me," he began again, returning to the attack.

"It isn't modest for a girl ever to know what a man expects of her until she's told," Betty replied demurely, "even in tennis. And besides, it was presumptuous for you to be so royally certain of my acquiescence in whatever you deigned to plan."

"I'll serve a cut so that you'll never be able to return it," threatened he.

"I can serve a cut myself," she retorted, with an accent which seemed to indicate a double significance in the words.

"Confound it!" he said, incisively, with sudden and inconsistent change of base, "it is perfect folly letting ladies into a tournament anyway. Who wants them? They always make trouble."

"I understood that you wanted one," Betty answered, unmoved, observing the fringe of her parasol with great apparent interest; "but of course I knew your invitation was not to be taken too seriously."

"Oh, bother!" the young man cried, slashing viciously at the head of a late-blooming daisy. "Why do you always insist on quarrelling with me?"

"Are we really quarrelling?" she laughed back with her most exasperating lightness of manner. "How delightful! If there is one thing that I enjoy more than I do tennis, it is a good quarrel."

"Tennis!" Granton retorted, the last shreds of his patience giving way. "It must be allowed that you can quarrel better than you can play. No girl," he went on, with increasing acerbity, "can ever really play tennis: she only plays at playing it; and it spoils any man's game to play with her. For my part, I cannot see why they are to be admitted to the tournament at all."

"_Merci!_" exclaimed Mistress Betty, stopping in the sun-dappled way to make him a profound courtesy. "Now I know what your true sentiments are, and how much your invitation was worth. Thank you for nothing, Mr. Nat Granton. I wish you luck of your partner,--when you get one. It is a cruel shame that by the rules of the tournament it must be a girl!"

And before Granton was able to reply or knew what she intended, pretty Miss Mork, with her tripping gait, her bright eyes, ugly name, and all, had whisked through a turnstile and was half-way across the lawn of the cottage where her particular bosom-friend Miss Dora Mosely was spending the summer.