they had always felt
themselves the most cordial and simple friends. Then had come the time
when Gifford must go to college, and Lois had only seen him in his short
vacations; and these gradually became far from pleasant. "Gifford has
changed," she said petulantly. "He is so polite to me," she complained to
Helen; not that Gifford had ever been rude, but he had been brotherly.

He once asked her for a rose from a bunch she had fastened in her dress.
"Why don't you pick one yourself, Giff?" she said simply; and afterwards,
with a sparkle of indignant tears in her eyes and with a quick impatience
which made her an amusing copy of her father, she said to Helen, "I
suppose he meant to treat me as though I was some fine young lady. Why
can't he be just the old Giff?" And when he came back from Europe, she
declared he was still worse.

Yet even in their estrangement they united in devotion to Helen. It was
to Helen they appealed in all their differences, which were many, and her
judgment was final; Lois never doubted it, even though Helen generally
thought Gifford was in the right. So now, when her cousin had left her,
she was at least sure of the young man's sympathy.

She was glad that he was going to practice in Lockhaven; he would be near
Helen, and make the new place less lonely for her, she said, once. And
Helen had smiled, as though she could be lonely where John was!

They walked now between the borders, where old-fashioned flowers crowded
together, towards the stone bench. This was a slab of sandstone, worn and
flaked by weather, and set on two low posts; it leaned a little against
the trunk of a silver-poplar tree, which served for a back, and it looked
like an altar ready for the sacrifice. The thick blossoming grass, which
the mower's scythe had been unable to reach, grew high about the corners;
three or four stone steps led up to it, but they had been laid so long
ago they were sunken at one side or the other, and almost hidden by moss
and wild violets. Quite close to the bench a spring bubbled out of the
hill-side, and ran singing through a hollowed locust log, which was mossy
green where the water had over-flowed, with a musical drip, upon the
grass underneath.

They stood a moment looking towards the west, where a golden dust seemed
blown across the sky, up into the darkness; then Lois took her seat upon
the bench. "When do you think you will get off, Giff?" she said.

"I'm not quite sure," he answered;