'll not let ye speak yet. I'm not a silly
to look for ye to be ready to say me yes at this quick askin'; but I'll
not let ye say me nay neither. Ye'll not refuse me the only thing I'm
askin' the day, an' that's that ye'll let me try to make ye love me.
Ye'll not say nay to that, lass. I'll gie my life to it." And now he
waited for an answer.

None came. Tears were in Bel's eyes as she looked up in his face. Twice
she opened her lips to speak, and twice her heart and the words failed
her. The tears became drops and rolled down the cheeks. Sandy was
dismayed.

"Ye're not afraid o' me, ye sweet thing, are ye?" he gasped out. "I'd
not vex ye for the world. If ye bid me to go, I'd go."

"No, I'm not afraid o' ye, Mr. Bruce," sobbed Bel. "I don't know what it
is makes me so silly. I'm not afraid o' ye, though. But I was for a few
minutes yesterday," she added archly, with a little glint of a roguish
smile, which broke through the tears like an April sun through rain, and
turned Sandy's head in the twinkling of an eye.

"Ay, ay," he said; "I minded it weel, an' I said to myself then, in that
first sight I had o' yer face, that I'd not harm a hair o' yer head. Oh,
my little lass, would ye gie me a kiss,--just one, to show ye're not
afraid, and to gie me leave to try to win ye out o' likin' into lovin'?"
he continued, drawing closer and bending toward her.

And then a wonderful thing happened. Little Bel, who, although she was
twenty years old, and had by no means been without her admirers, had
never yet kissed any man but her father and brothers, put up her rosy
lips, as confidingly as a little child, to be kissed by this strange
wooer, who wooed only for leave to woo.

"An' if he'd only known it, he might ha' asked a' he wanted then as well
as later," said Little Bel, honestly avowing the whole to her mother.
"As soon as he put his hands on me the very heart in me said he was my
man for a' my life. An' there's no shame in it that I can see. If a man
may love that way in the lighting of an eye, why may not a girl do the
same? There's not one kind o' heart i' the breast of a man an' another
kind i' the breast of a woman, as ever I heard." In which Little Bel, in
her innocence, was wiser than people wiser than she.

And after this there is no need of telling more,--only a picture or two
which are perhaps worth sketching in few words. One is the expression
which was seen on Sandy Bruce's face one day, not many weeks after h