ey were long and very beautiful as they lay
in a fringe against her cheek, yet exquisite as they were he longed to
see her eyes again.

"I'm Miss Morton's nephew from Indiana," the young man managed to
stammer, feeling some explanation might bridge the gulf of
embarrassment. "I am visiting here."

"Oh!"

Persistently she studied the toe of her shoe. If Bob had thought her
appealing before, now, demure against the background of budding apple
trees, with a shaft of sunlight on her hair, and the kitten cuddled
against her breast, she put to rout the few intelligent ideas remaining
to the young man.

Wonderingly, helplessly, he watched while she continued to caress the
minute creature in her arms.

"Are you staying here long?" she asked at length, gaining courage to
look up.

"I--eh--yes; that is--I hope so," Bob answered with sudden fervor.

"You like Wilton then."

"Tremendously!"

"Most strangers think the place has great beauty," observed his guest
innocently.

"There's more beauty here in Wilton than I ever saw before in all my
life," burst out Bob, then stopped suddenly and blushed.

His listener dimpled.

"Really?" she remarked, raising her delicately arched brows. "You are
enthusiastic about the Cape, aren't you!"

"Some parts of it."

"Where else have you been?"

The question came with disturbing directness.

"Oh--why--Middleboro, Tremont, Buzzard's Bay and Harwich," answered the
man hurriedly. As he named the list he was conscious that it smacked
rather too suggestively of a brakeman's, and he saw she thought so too,
for she turned aside to hide a smile.

"You might sit down; won't you?" he suggested, eager that she should
not depart.

Flecking the dust from the soap box with his handkerchief, he dragged
it forward and placed it near the workbench.

As she bent her head to accept the crude throne with a queen's
graciousness, Jezebel, roused into playful humor, thrust forth her
claws and, encountering Bob as he rose from his stooping posture, fixed
them with random firmness in his necktie.

Now it chanced that the tie was a four-in-hand of raw silk, very choice
in color but of a fatally loose oriental weave; and once entangled in
its meshes the task of extricating its delicate threads from the clutch
that gripped them seemed hopeless. It apparently failed to dawn on
either of the young persons brought into such embarrassingly close
contact by the dilemma that the kitten could be ha