etically nosed his
way. Then he stood wagging his tail, with Nada sitting on the grass
half a dozen steps from him, wiping the strawberry stain from her
finger-tips. And the stain was on her red lips, and a bit of it against
the flush of her cheek, as she gave a little cry of gladness and
greeting to Peter. Her eyes flashed beyond him, and every drop of
blood in her slim, beautiful little body seemed to be throbbing with an
excitement new to Peter as she looked for Jolly Roger.

Peter went to her, and dropped down, with his head in her lap, and
looking up through his bushy eye-brows he saw a livid bruise just under
the ripples of her brown hair, where there had been no mark yesterday,
or the day before. Nada's hands drew him closer, until he was half in
her lap, and she bent her face down to him, so that her thick, shining
hair fell all about him. Peter loved her hair, almost as much as Jolly
Roger loved it, and he closed his eyes and drew a deep breath of content
as the smothering sweetness of it shut out the sunlight from him.

"Peter," she whispered, "I'm almost scared to have him come today. I've
promised him. You remember--I promised to tell him if Jed Hawkins struck
me again. And he has! He made that mark, and if Jolly Roger knows it
he'll kill him. I've got to lie--lie--"

Peter wriggled, to show his interest, and his hard tail thumped the
ground. For a space Nada said nothing more, and he could hear and feel
the beating of her heart close down against him. Then she raised her
head, and looked in the direction from which she would first hear Jolly
Roger as he came through the young jackpines. Peter, with his eyes half
closed in a vast contentment, did not see or sense the change in her
today--that her blue eyes were brighter, her cheeks flushed, and in her
body a strange and subdued throbbing that had never been there before.
Not even to Peter did she whisper her secret, but waited and listened
for Jolly Roger, and when at last she heard him and he came through
the screen of jackpines, the color in her cheeks was like the stain of
strawberries crimsoning her finger-tips. In an instant, looking down
upon her, Jolly Roger saw what Peter had not discovered, and he stopped
in his tracks, his heart thumping like a hammer inside him. Never, even
in his dreams, had the girl looked lovelier than she did now, and never
had her eyes met his eyes as they met them today, and never had her red
lips said as much to him, with