er."

"But her pride--wouldn't she feel that she couldn't meet him on equal
terms--"

"Oh, pride! Stuff! Do you suppose that a girl who really cared for a
person would think of the terms she met them on? When it comes to such a
thing as that there _is_ no pride; and proud girls and meek girls are
just alike--like cats in the dark."

"Do you think so?" asked Matt; the sunny glisten, which had been wanting
to them before, came into his eyes.

"I _know_ so," said Louise. "Why, do you think that Jack Wilmington
still--"

"No; no. I was just wondering. I think I shall run down to Boston
to-morrow, and see father--Or, no! Mother won't be back till to-morrow
evening. Well, I will talk with you, at dinner, about it."

Matt went off to his mowing, and Louise heard the cackle of his machine
before she reached the camp with Maxwell's letters.

"Don't get up!" she called to him, when he lifted himself with one arm
at the stir of her gown over the pine-needles. "Merely two letters that
I thought perhaps you might want to see at once."

He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground.
"This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse
me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when
he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer;
but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to
feel like work, for the first time since I came up here."

"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the
board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the
hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything.
You must stay the whole summer."

"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his
side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like."

"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they
will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly
well?"

"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one
thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the
light and shade flecks on her face and figure.

"I _know_ you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted.

"And for another thing," he went on, "the high and holy duty we poor
people feel not to stop working for a living as long as we live. It's a
caste pride. Poverty obliges, as well as nobility."

"Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges,