g out of bed and peeped from her window, and there was a dark,
slight figure out in the yard, and he was looking up at her window,
whistling. Shame, and mirth, and also exultation, which overpowered
them both, stirred within the child's breast. She had read of things
like this. Here was her boy lover coming out this bitter night just
for the sake of looking up at her window. She adored him for it.
Then she heard a window raised with a violent rasp across the yard,
and saw her grandmother's night-capped head thrust forth. She heard
her shrill, imperious voice call out quite distinctly, "Boy, who be
you?"

The lovelorn whistler ceased his pipe, and evidently, had he
consulted his own discretion, would have shown a pair of flying
heels, but he walked bravely up to the window and the night-capped
head and replied. Ellen could not hear what he said, but she
distinguished plainly enough her grandmother's concluding remarks.

"Go home," cried Mrs. Zelotes; "go home just as fast as you can and
go to bed. Go home!" Mrs. Zelotes made a violent shooting motion
with her hands and her white head as if he were a cat, and Granville
Joy obeyed. However, Ellen heard his brave, retreating whistle far
down the road. She went back to bed, and lay awake with a fervor of
young love roused into a flame by opposition swelling high in her
heart. But the next afternoon, after school, Ellen, to Granville
Joy's great bliss and astonishment, insinuated herself, through the
crowd of out-going scholars, close to him, and presently, had he not
been so incredulous, for he was a modest boy, he would have said it
was by no volition of his own that he found himself walking down the
street with her. And when they reached his house, which was only
half-way to her own, she looked at him with such a wistful surprise
as he motioned to leave her that he could not mistake it, and he
walked on at her side quite to her own house. Granville Joy was a
gentle boy, young for his age, which was a year more than Ellen's.
He had a face as gentle as a girl's, and really beautiful. Women all
loved him, and the school-girls raised an admiring treble chorus in
his praise whenever his name was spoken. He was saved from
effeminacy by nervous impulses which passed for sustained manly
daring. "He once licked a boy a third bigger than he was, and you
needn't call him sissy," one girl said once to a decrying friend.
To-day, as the boy and girl neared Mrs. Zelotes's house, Granv