elf.

"I couldn't like--any one--if it was to make all the people who love me
unhappy, I suppose," Sally said in her mild, prim voice, with an effort
at lightness. "No happiness could come of that, could it, Doctor?"

To this dutiful expression the doctor made no immediate answer,
observing in a dissatisfied tone, after a pause: "That sounds like your
mother, or Lydia."

Sally, leaning against the shabby cushions of the carriage, looked down
in silent distress.

"There never could be anything serious between Joe Hawkes and I," she
said presently, with a little unnatural laugh. She was not quite sure
of her pronoun. She looked anxiously at Dr. Ben's face. It was still
troubled and overcast. Sally wondered uncomfortably if he would tell
her mother that she was seeing Joe frequently. As it chanced, she and
Joe had more than once encountered the old man on their solitary walks
and talks. She thought, in her amiable heart, that if she only knew
what Dr. Ben wanted her to say she would say it; or what viewpoint he
expected her to take she would assume it.

"Joe and I were helping Mrs. David," she submitted timidly, "and we
came out to sit in the cool."

"Don't be a hypocrite, Sally," the doctor said absently. Sally laughed
with an effort to make the conversation seem all a joke, but she was
puzzled and unhappy. "Well," said the doctor suddenly, gathering up his
reins and rattling the whip in its socket as a gentle hint to the old
mare, "I must be getting on. I want you to come and see me, Sally. Come
to-morrow. I want to talk to you."

"Yes, sir," Sally answered obediently. She would have put out her
tongue for his inspection then and there if he had suggested it.

When the old phaeton had rattled out of the yard she went back to the
shadows and Joe. She was past all argument, all analysis, all reason,
now. She hungered only for this: Joe's big clean young arms about her;
Joe's fresh lips, with their ignorant passion, against hers. For years
she had known Joe only by sight; a few months ago she had been merely
amused and flattered by the boy's crudely expressed preference; even
now she knew that for a Monroe girl, at twenty-one, to waste a thought
on a Hawkes boy of nineteen was utter madness. But a week or two ago,
walking home from church with her mother and herself on Sunday night,
Joe had detained her for a moment under the dooryard trees--had kissed
her. Sally was like a young tiger, tamed, petted, innocuous, wh