e, would be her heaven, and neither
gold nor grandeur nor princely mansion could tempt her from his side,
and she would welcome the grave if he proved false to her. It was all
the high-flown, emotional, melodramatic trash to be expected of an
ill-balanced girl whose pretty head was stuffed with the romance of the
country post-office type, and Davies sighed heavily as he read.

He had planned to visit an old friend of his father's and see something
of New York harbor and city before turning his back on the East. Never
yet had he set foot in Gotham, and as it would be years before
opportunity might again be afforded him, he had weighed it all pro and
con, and decided that Dr. Iverson's advice and invitation should be
accepted. He would go with his classmates, spend the last evening with
them, and join the reverend doctor on the morrow. His mother, even in
her invalided state, urged that he should do so, but Almira heard the
plan with fresh outburst of tears. There was to be a grand picnic of
all the beaux and belles of Urbana on the 18th. She had counted on
having her soldier lover in attendance on that occasion. She had told
him of it, and that was enough. She had declined all other invitations,
saying that Mr. Davies was to hasten thither the moment the graduating
exercises were over, and now to think of the triumph and malicious
delight of the other girls was intolerable. Her lover should fly to her
like homing-pigeon the instant he was released from prison. It was
tantamount to treason that he should purpose anything else. Almira
fretted herself into a fever. She wrote one long letter to the recreant
Parson, and her sister Be_ay_trice, as they called her, followed it up
with another still more alarming. Then, as he did not wire instant
submission, the telegram was sent. Old Quimby was on the platform at the
Urbana station as Davies sprang from the train. "Nothing much," said he,
in response to the young man's eager inquiry. "Some dam girl nonsense
she and Bee have cooked up between them. When they ain't devilling the
life out of their step-mother they're worrying somebody else. Oh,
yes!--'course the doctor's been humbugging for a week,--too glad to get
a chance of shovin' in a bill."

Davies went gravely up the sunny street to his mother's home,--a meeting
that served to chase away the clouds, and then an hour later to Almira's
bower. Bee ushered him into a pretty room whose windows were overhung
with honeysuckle and