garded each other a minute.

"You seem to have changed, Hazel!"

He was sorry he had said it. She blushed and did not look him squarely
in the face as she replied:

"Hard work."

Evan sat wondering, in silence. Hazel had had a nice home in Mt.
Alban. Had she run away from it? And how was it that she looked so
subdued?--she used to be a vivacious creature, fond of dresses and
gaiety. Now she wore a plain white waist and a skirt of cheap blue
serge. The Mt. Alban color was gone, and pensiveness dusked her
intelligent face.

It was, doubtless, to break the embarrassing silence creeping between
them that Hazel asked Evan if he worked hard in Hamilton. How long had
he been in that branch of the bank?

"I'll tell you after the show," he answered, "if you'll have dinner
with me at the ---- Hotel. We can go for a paddle afterwards."

She smiled and said it was very kind of him and that she would just
love to spend the evening in that way.

In the second act Evan noticed that Hazel wiped her eyes frequently
with a miniature handkerchief. He felt like doing it himself in the
next act, and Hazel sobbed audibly. Of course, she was not the only
weeping woman at that matinee.

At dinner a glow of the girl's old-time color came back, and with it a
charm that Evan had noticed in her eyes at Mt. Alban dances, when a
certain bankclerk was hovering near.

"Do you know what a boarding-house appetite is, Ev--Mr.--?"

"Did you say 'Mr.'? I've been calling you 'Hazel,' you know."

She laughed. "I meant 'Evan.'"

Evan suddenly recalled the last time he had bandied names with a Mt.
Alban girl.

"Yes," he replied, "you bet I do. But I'm eating farm-meals now."

She looked surprised, and he told her about resigning from the bank,
"because the work was too hard," and about coming to the Fruit Belt to
recreate.

"You're what I call a sensible boy, Evan.... I wish....."

Hazel did not finish her wish. She blushed instead.

"You don't know how good it seems to meet you here like this, Hazel,"
Nelson observed, to relieve the situation. He knew perfectly well that
her wish was about Bill Watson.

"I don't think you can enjoy it half so well as I."

"Why?" His question was curious, but thoughtless.

"Well--I'm lonesome," she hesitated; "I hardly ever go out--except when
Billy comes over."

It was out at last, and then they became more intimate. As they walked
down the street to the wharf, later, Hazel press