a hurry, that makes people
talk about 'scenery.' Isn't it?"

"I dare say. I don't care for skimming, myself. But I like to go to
nice places, and stay long enough to get into them, as you say. I
mean to go to Scotland next year. I've a place there among the hills
and lochs, Miss Rosamond."

"Yes. I have heard so. I should think you would wish to go and see
it."

"I'll tell you what I wish, Miss Holabird!" he said suddenly,
letting go his moustache, and turning round with sufficient
manfulness, and facing her. "I suppose there is a more gradual and
elegant way of saying it; but I believe straightforward is as good
as any. I wish you cared for me as I care for you, and then you
would go with me."

Rosamond was utterly confounded. She had not imagined that it could
be hurled at her, this fashion; she thought she could parry and put
aside, if she saw anything coming. She was bewildered and breathless
with the shock of it; she could only blindly, and in very foolish
words, hurl it back.

"O, dear, no!" she exclaimed, her face crimson. "I mean--I don't--I
couldn't! I beg your pardon, Mr. Mucklegrand; you are very good; I
am very sorry; but I wish you hadn't said so. We had better go
back."

"No," said Archie Mucklegrand, "not yet. I've said it now. I said it
like a moon calf, but I mean it like a man. Won't you--can't you--be
my wife, Rosamond? I must know that."

"No, Mr. Mucklegrand," answered Rosamond, quite steadily now and
gently. "I could not be. We were never meant for each other. You
will think so yourself next year,--by the time you go to Scotland."

"I shall never think so."

Of course he said that; young men always do; they mean it at the
moment, and nothing can persuade them otherwise.

"I told you I had lived right here, and grown into these things, and
they into me," said Rosamond, with a sweet slow earnestness, as if
she thought out while she explained it; and so she did; for the
thought and meaning of her life dawned upon her with a new
perception, as she stood at this point and crisis of it in the
responsibility of her young womanhood. "And these, and all the
things that have influenced me, have given my life its direction;
and I can see clearly that it was never meant to be your way. I do
not know what it will be; but I know yours is different. It would be
wrenching mine to turn it so."

"But I would turn mine for you," said Archie.

"You couldn't. Lives _grow_ together. They join beforehan