"Oh, yes, I did," said Mark;—"there, don't you see the end of his tail sticking out from under the largest stone? May-be he has had one little girl for breakfast this morning, and don't care about another for luncheon, or else he would spring up after you, and gobble you up in a minute."
"What stories, Mark! Aunt Eleanor says there are no dragons, nor ever were."
"Pooh!" retorted Mark, contemptuously,—"Aunt Eleanor has not seen everything that there is to be seen in the world. Look again, Rosy."
Again the little curly head was bent over the well, somewhat puzzled which to believe, Aunt Eleanor or Mark, but half-inclined to credit Mark's eyes rather than Aunt Eleanor's words.
"Do you think that can be one of his scales?" asked she, pointing to a small piece of tin which glittered in a stray sunbeam among the stones.
Mark's eyes followed the direction of her finger, and he was about to declare that it must be a scale that the dragon had scraped off his back, wriggling among the stones, when both children were startled by a loud voice calling out, "What are you doing, children? You will fall into the well and break your good-for-nothing little necks!"
Mark and Rosamond drew back, and saw a young man, their brother Bradford, with a basket and a fishing-rod in his hand, coming up the knoll.
"Why are you here, Mark?" asked he. "Aunt Eleanor thinks it a dangerous place, and has forbidden you to play here."
Mark looked up at his brother. "I come," said he, sturdily, "for that very reason,—because I am told not to. I won't mind Aunt Eleanor, nor any other woman."
Bradford shook his head and burst out into a laugh. "Ah, Mark, my boy," said he, with a serious, comical air, "it will do very well for you to talk,—you will find out, sooner or later, that all men have to do just what women wish."