nd like that? Don't you think love is a sacred thing, Cousin Lola?"

Fictitious sisterships, brotherships, and cousinships are devices to
push things along, well known to seventeen and even more advanced ages.
On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt
had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, "Ickle boy Baxter" and
"Cousin Lola." (Thus they had broken down the tedious formalities of
their first twenty minutes together.)

"Don't you think love is sacred?" he repeated in the deepest tone of
which his vocal cords were capable.

"Ess," said Miss Pratt.

"_I_ do!" William was emphatic. "I think love is the most sacred thing
there is. I don't mean SOME kinds of love. I mean REAL love. You take
some people, I don't believe they ever know what real love means. They
TALK about it, maybe, but they don't understand it. Love is something
nobody can understand unless they feel it and and if they don't
understand it they don't feel it. Don't YOU think so?"

"Ess."

"Love," William continued, his voice lifting and thrilling to the great
theme--"love is something nobody can ever have but one time in their
lives, and if they don't have it then, why prob'ly they never will.
Now, if a man REALLY loves a girl, why he'd do anything in the world she
wanted him to. Don't YOU think so?"

"Ess, 'deedums!" said the silvery voice.

"But if he didn't, then he wouldn't," said William vehemently. "But when
a man really loves a girl he will. Now, you take a man like that and
he can generally do just about anything the girl he loves wants him
to. Say, f'rinstance, she wants him to love her even more than he does
already--or almost anything like that--and supposin' she asks him to.
Well, he would go ahead and do it. If they really loved each other he
would!"

He paused a moment, then in a lowered tone he said, "I think REAL love
is sacred, don't you?"

"Ess."

"Don't you think love is the most sacred thing there is--that is, if
it's REAL love?"

"Ess."

"_I_ do," said William, warmly. "I--I'm glad you feel like that, because
I think real love is the kind nobody could have but just once in their
lives, but if it isn't REAL love, why--why most people never have it at
all, because--" He paused, seeming to seek for the exact phrase which
would express his meaning. "--Because the REAL love a man feels for a
girl and a girl for a man, if they REALLY love each other, and, you look
at a case like that, of co