anching
foliage. "But I don't think it's practical."

"Why be practical? Nobody is practical on Strawberry Acres, according
to a certain brilliant but skeptical attorney from town. Your
greatest aim has been to remain a girl as long as possible. Girls
climb trees. _Ergo_--"

He began to descend. "Wait!" cried Sally, as he set foot on the lowest
limb, a matter of ten feet above her head, and paused to look down at
her. "Stay there, please--Do you really want me to come up?"

"Very much. It's entirely possible. Set your foot on that knob, reach up
your arm, I'll let myself down far enough to get hold of your hand, and
the next thing you know you'll be sitting beside me here."

"Then what will happen?"

"Then--we'll have a little talk I've been waiting for all day. I began
to think I couldn't get it till evening fell, when the garden might
help me out."

"I think the garden is a very nice place for conversation." Sally put
both hands behind her back, looking up at him.

"Better than the limb of an oak tree? I admit it--for some sorts of
conversation. Up here I should be forced to hold on with one arm. But
there would be compensation in that, for with the other arm I should be
forced to hold you on!"

His laughing eyes looked down at her. She shook her head. "If I came up
the tree I should prove that I am still a girl. If I am still a girl--"

"Are you still a girl? Is that still your greatest desire?" He leaned
forward, and the smile suddenly left his lips. His eyes searched hers.

The face she bravely lifted to him was a girl's for youthful beauty, but
into it had come something very sweet and womanly, which at last gave him
the leave he had waited so long for. "No--I think I've grown up." she
said, quite clearly.

With an exclamation, the sinewy figure in the tree made short work of
the ten feet to the ground, swinging itself off from the limb by both
hands and dropping lightly down.

"I don't think I could have waited a day longer," said Jarvis Burnside.
Then, with the sheltering trunk of the great oak shutting off all
possible vision from the far distant house, he drew Sally Lane into his
eager arms.

* * * * *

"Why so late?" Maxwell Lane looked up to ask, as his sister Sally came
somewhat hurriedly in to dinner, when the rest of the household were
half through.

"Please excuse my pink gingham," apologized Sally, as she dropped into
her chair. She glanced from Mrs. Bu