ra Dimwood's laughing eyes shining upon him as she
stood in the doorway.

Many a time during that month he had thought of this meeting--had
imagined what it would be like--what would be his manner towards
her--what would be her greeting, and what they would say. He would be
cold, gentle, formal, gallant, gay, sad, trustful, reproachful, even as
the moods in which he thought of her came to his foolish brain. He would
always begin with respectful seriousness, or a frankness equal to her
own, but never, never again would he offend as he had offended under the
buckeyes! And now, with her pretty face shining upon him, all his plans,
his speeches, his preparations vanished, and left him dumb. Yet he moved
towards her with a brief articulate something on his lips,--something
between a laugh and a sigh,--but that really was a kiss, and--in point
of fact--promptly folded her in his arms.

Yet it was certainly direct, and perhaps the best that could be done,
for the young lady did not emerge from it as coolly, as unemotionally,
nor possibly as quickly as she had under the shade of the buckeyes. But
she persuaded him--by still holding his hand--to sit beside her on the
chilly, highly varnished "green rep" sofa, albeit to him it was a bank
in a bower of enchantment. Then she said, with adorable reproachfulness,
"You don't ask what I did with the body."

Mr. Edward Brice started. He was young, and unfamiliar with the evasive
expansiveness of the female mind at such supreme moments.

"The body--oh, yes--certainly."

"I buried it myself--it was suthin too awful!--and the gang would have
been sure to have found it, and the empty belt. I burned THAT. So that
nobody knows nothin'."

It was not a time for strictly grammatical negatives, and I am
afraid that the girl's characteristically familiar speech, even when
pathetically corrected here and there by the influence of the convent,
endeared her the more to him. And when she said, "And now, Mr. Edward
Brice, sit over at that end of the sofy and let's talk," they talked.
They talked for an hour, more or less continuously, until they were
surprised by a discreet cough and the entrance of Mrs. Tarbox. Then
there was more talk, and the discovery that Mr. Brice was long due at
the office.

"Ye might drop in, now and then, whenever ye feel like it, and Flo is at
home," suggested Mrs. Tarbox at parting.

Mr. Brice DID drop in frequently during the next month. On one of
these occasions