, if you're going to sit
there and giggle you'll spoil everything. Mr. Clark wants to court, and
it's getting late."

"P'raps I've went fur enough fer tonight," remarked Skim, uneasily.
"Next time they'll leave us alone, an' then----"

"Oh, don't postpone it, please!" begged Beth, giving the boy a demure
glance from her soft brown eyes. "And don't mind my cousins. I don't."

"These things kain't be hurried," he said. "Si Merkle courted three
weeks afore he popped. He tol' me so."

"Then he was a very foolish man," declared Patsy, positively. "Just look
at Beth! She's dying to have you speak out. What's the use of waiting,
when she knows why you are here?"

By this time Skim had been flattered to the extent of destroying any
stray sense he might ever have possessed. His utter ignorance of girls
and their ways may have been partly responsible for his idiocy, or his
mother's conviction that all that was necessary was for him to declare
himself in order to be accepted had misled him and induced him to
abandon any native diffidence he might have had. Anyway, the boy fell
into the snare set by the mischievous young ladies without a suspicion
of his impending fate.

"Miss Beth," said he, "ef yer willin', I'll marry ye; any time ye say. I
agreed t' help Dick Pearson with the harvestin', but I'll try to' git
Ned Long to take my place, an' it don't matter much, nohow."

"But I couldn't have you break an engagement," cried Beth, hastily.

"Why not?"

"Oh, it wouldn't be right, at all. Mr. Pearson would never forgive me,"
she asserted.

"Can't ye--"

"No; not before harvest, Skim. I couldn't think of it."

"But arterward--"

"No; I've resolved never to marry after harvest. So, as you're engaged,
and I don't approve of breaking engagements, I must refuse your
proposition entirely."

Skim looked surprised; then perplexed; then annoyed.

"P'raps I didn't pop jest right," he murmured, growing red again.

"You popped beautifully," declared Patsy. "But Beth is very peculiar,
and set in her ways. I'm afraid she wouldn't make you a good
wife, anyhow."

"Then p'raps the gal in blue----"

"No;" said Louise. "I have the same prejudices as my cousin. If you
hadn't been engaged for the harvest I might have listened to you; but
that settles the matter definitely, as far as I am concerned."

Skim sighed.

"Ma'll be mad as a hornet ef I don't get any of ye," he remarked, sadly.
"She's paid Sam Cotting fer this courtin' s