ra?"

"I suppose I really did it to oblige the neighbours"--Clara tossed her
head. "People were beginning to wonder."

"To wonder?"

"Yes--why I didn't get married. I suppose I didn't like to keep them in
suspense. I've discovered that most girls marry out of consideration for
the neighbourhood."

Nils bent his head toward her and his white teeth flashed. "I'd have
gambled that one girl I knew would say, 'Let the neighbourhood be
damned.'"

Clara shook her head mournfully. "You see, they have it on you, Nils;
that is, if you're a woman. They say you're beginning to go off. That's
what makes us get married: we can't stand the laugh."

Nils looked sidewise at her. He had never seen her head droop before.
Resignation was the last thing he would have expected of her. "In your
case, there wasn't something else?"

"Something else?"

"I mean, you didn't do it to spite somebody? Somebody who didn't come
back?"

Clara drew herself up. "Oh, I never thought you'd come back. Not after
I stopped writing to you, at least. _That_ was all over, long before I
married Olaf."

"It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could do to
me was to marry Olaf?"

Clara laughed. "No; I didn't know you were so fond of Olaf."

Nils smoothed his horse's mane with his glove. "You know, Clara Vavrika,
you are never going to stick it out. You'll cut away some day, and I've
been thinking you might as well cut away with me."

Clara threw up her chin. "Oh, you don't know me as well as you think. I
won't cut away. Sometimes, when I'm with father, I feel like it. But I
can hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They've never got the best of
me yet, and one can live, so long as one isn't beaten. If I go back to
father, it's all up with Olaf in politics. He knows that, and he never
goes much beyond sulking. I've as much wit as the Ericsons. I'll never
leave them unless I can show them a thing or two."

"You mean unless you can come it over them?"

"Yes--unless I go away with a man who is cleverer than they are, and who
has more money."

Nils whistled. "Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. The Ericsons,
take the lot of them, are a bunch to beat. But I should think the
excitement of tormenting them would have worn off by this time."

"It has, I'm afraid," Clara admitted mournfully.

"Then why don't you cut away? There are more amusing games than this in
the world. When I came home I thought it might amuse me to bully a f