romise you won't. You know I never wanted to hurt the
moon, dear."

Philip shook his head.

"Don't worry about the moon. It is a tough old orb. I shan't be too
unhappy. A man has a whole lot of things beside love in his life. I am
not going to let myself be such a fool as to be miserable because things
started out a little differently from what I would like to have them."
His smile was brave but his eyes belied the smile and Carlotta's heart
smote her.

"You will forget me," she said. It was half a reproach, half a command.

Again he shook his head in denial.

"Do you remember the queen who claimed she had Calais stamped on her
heart? Well, open mine a hundred years from now and you'll read
_Carlotta_."

"But won't you ever marry?" pursued Carlotta with youth's insistence on
probing wounds to the quick.

"I don't know. Probably," he added honestly. "A man is a poor stick in
this world without a home and kiddies. If I do it will be a long time yet
though. It will be many a year before I see anybody but you, no matter
where I look."

"But I am horrid--selfish, cowardly, altogether horrid."

"Are you?" smiled Phil. "I wonder. Anyway I love you. Come on, dear.
We'll have to hurry. The car is nearly due."

And, as twilight settled down over the valley like a great bird brooding
over its nest, Philip and Carlotta went down from the mountain.

CHAPTER IV

A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS BUT BEHAVED LIKE ONE

Baccalaureate services being over and the graduates duly exhorted to the
wisdom of the ages, the latter were for a time permitted to alight from
their lofty pedestal in the public eye and to revert temporarily to the
comfortable if less exalted state of being plain every day human girls.

While Philip and Carlotta went up on the heights fondly believing they
were settling their destinies forever, Tony had been enjoying an
afternoon _en famille_ with her uncle and her brother Ted.

Suddenly she looked at her watch and sprang up from the arm of her
uncle's chair on which she had been perched, chattering and content, for
a couple of hours.

"My goodness! It is most four o'clock. Dick will be here in a minute. May
I call up the garage and ask them to send the car around? I'm dying for a
ride. We can go over to South Hadley and get the twins, if you'd like.
I'm sure they must have had enough of Mt. Holyoke by this time."

"Car's out of commission," grunted Ted from behind his sporting sheet.

"Out of comm