It had been the hope of the present occupant that when he left the estate he might leave it in the hands of a son, but this was not to be.
After a short married life his wife died, leaving him childless.
Some years later he married a second time. When his first child was born and he was told it was a daughter, he was disappointed. When the second child came and was also a girl, his disappointment verged on resentment. Through the hours of anxious waiting that preceded the arrival of the third child, he walked the floor in a state of mind alternating between hope and fear, and when at last the suspense was over and he looked upon the tiny features of a son, his joy knew no bounds.
He hurried out to break the news to the two little sisters whom he imagined would be as pleased as he was. He found them in the yard, Vivian swinging with her doll and Jean digging a hole in a pile of sand. When the important announcement was made, the black-haired Vivian clapped her hands for joy, but the other little girl kept right on digging, just as if she had not heard. When she had passed the critical point in the process of excavating she paused and looked up.
The expression in her father's face was something new to her, and she studied him in silence a moment, then said, solemnly:
"Are boys any better than girls, father?"
"Better? Why no, they are no better. They are boys, that is all."
"Well, then!" and the tone of her voice, no less than the words, conveyed the meaning that the matter was settled, and she returned to her digging as if nothing had happened. But she did not forget the incident, and when, shortly after, the tiny baby boy in the cold arms of his mother had been put to rest beneath a mound, and the light had gone out of the father's face and the elasticity out of his step, little Jean pondered and her heart went out strangely to her father in his bitter trouble. She followed him softly about and studied him.
One evening, some time after the little son had come and gone, Jean appeared before her father in the library to make an important announcement. "I've been thinking the matter over, father," she said, "and I've made up my mind I will be your boy. You want a boy, and you know yourself you'll never be able to make one of Vivian, with her wee little mouth and her long braids. Now my hair is just right and I can throw a stone exactly over the middle of the barn and kick a ball farther than any boy on the block. I shall kick more hereafter, for don't you think a boy's legs ought to be cultivated?"