tell her so. You said you would help me, and
I hope you will not withdraw from that promise."

"No, indeed," said she, "but I do not know her as well as I thought I
did. But here she comes now, and without the young man. I hope she has
not drowned him!"

Without heeding anything that had just been said to him Dick kept his
eyes fixed upon the sparkling girl who now approached them. Every step
she made was another link in his chain; Mrs. Easterfield glanced at him
and knew this. She pitied him for what he had to tell her now, and more
for what he might have to hear from her at another time. But Olive saved
Dick from any present ordeal. She stepped up to him and offered him her
hand.

"I do not wonder, Mr. Lancaster," she said, "that you did not want to
come back and tell me your doleful story, but as I know what it is, we
need not say anything about it now, except that I am ever so much
obliged to you for all your kindness to me. And now I am going to ask
another favor. Won't you let me speak to Mrs. Easterfield a few
moments?"

As soon as they were seated, with the door shut, Olive began.

"Well," said she, "he has proposed."

"Mr. Hemphill!" exclaimed Mrs. Easterfield.

"Rupert," Olive answered, "yes, it is truly Rupert who proposed to me."

"I declare," cried Mrs. Easterfield, "you come to me and tell me this as
if it were a piece of glad news. Yesterday, and even this morning, you
were plunged in grief, and now your eyes shine as if you were positively
happy."

"I have told you my aim and object in life," said the girl. "I am trying
to do something, and to do it soon, and everything is going on smoothly.
And as to being happy, I tell you, Mrs. Easterfield, there is no woman
alive who could help being made happy by such a declaration as I have
just received. No matter what answer she gave him, she would be bound
to be happy."

"Most other women would not have let him make it," said Mrs. Easterfield
a little severely.

"There is something in that," said Olive, "but they would not have the
object in life I have. I may be unduly exalted, but you would not wonder
at it if you had seen him and heard him. Mrs. Easterfield, that man
loves me exactly as I used to love him, and he has told me his love just
as I would have told him mine if I could have carried out the wish of my
heart. His eyes glowed, his frame shook with the ardor of his passion.
Two or three times I had to tell him that if he did not trim boat