icity.

"Flossie Brisk says Cyrus is ruining all the trees on his father's place
cutting your name on them," said Sara Ray. "His father told him he would
whip him if he didn't stop, but Cyrus keeps right on. He told Flossie it
relieved his feelings. Flossie says he cut yours and his together on the
birch tree in front of the parlour window, and a row of hearts around
them."

"Just where every visitor can see them, I suppose," lamented Cecily. "He
just worries my life out. And what I mind most of all is, he sits and
looks at me in school with such melancholy, reproachful eyes when he
ought to be working sums. I won't look at him, but I FEEL him staring at
me, and it makes me so nervous."

"They say his mother was out of her mind at one time," said Felicity.

I do not think Felicity was quite well pleased that Cyrus should have
passed over her rose-red prettiness to set his affections on that demure
elf of a Cecily. She did not want the allegiance of Cyrus in the least,
but it was something of a slight that he had not wanted her to want it.

"And he sends me pieces of poetry he cuts out of the papers," Cecily
went on, "with lots of the lines marked with a lead pencil. Yesterday he
put one in his letter, and this is what he marked:

"'If you will not relent to me
Then must I learn to know
Darkness alone till life be flown.

Here--I have the piece in my sewing-bag--I'll read it all to you."

Those three graceless girls read the sentimental rhyme and giggled over
it. Poor Cyrus! His young affections were sadly misplaced. But after
all, though Cecily never relented towards him, he did not condemn
himself to darkness alone till life was flown. Quite early in life he
wedded a stout, rosy, buxom lass, the very antithesis of his first love;
he prospered in his undertakings, raised a large and respectable family,
and was eventually appointed a Justice of the Peace. Which was all very
sensible of Cyrus.

CHAPTER XV. THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

June was crowded full of interest that year. We gathered in with
its sheaf of fragrant days the choicest harvest of childhood. Things
happened right along. Cecily declared she hated to go to sleep for fear
she might miss something. There were so many dear delights along the
golden road to give us pleasure--the earth dappled with new blossom,
the dance of shadows in the fields, the rustling, rain-wet ways of the
woods, the faint fragrance in meadow lanes, liltings