all her flirting. But she
just won't marry."

"I will!"

Judith whirled about on the sun warm door step and came in. Her black
eyes were flashing and her round cheeks were crimson.

"Such a temper you never saw!" reported Mrs. Tony afterwards. "Though
'tweren't to be wondered at. Theodora was most awful aggravating."

"I will," repeated Judith stormily. "I'm tired of being nagged day in
and day out. I'll marry--and what is more I'll marry the very first
man that asks me--that I will, if it is old Widower Delane himself!
How does that suit you, Aunt Theodora?"

Mrs. Theodora's mental processes were never slow. She dropped her
knitting ball and stooped for it. In that time she had decided what to
do. She knew that Judith would stick to her word, Stewart-like, and
she must trim her sails to catch this new wind.

"It suits me real well, Judith," she said calmly, "you can marry the
first man that asks you and I'll say no word to hinder."

The color went out of Judith's face, leaving it pale as ashes. Her
hasty assertion had no sooner been uttered than it was repented of,
but she must stand by it now. She went out of the kitchen without
another glance at her aunt or the delighted Mrs. Tony and dashed up
the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of
Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless
boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a
gay tattoo on the window panes to the music of the wind.

Judith sat down in her little rocker and dropped her pointed chin in
her hands. Far down the valley, over the firs on the McGregor hill and
the blue mirror of the Cranston pond, Bruce Marshall's little gray
house peeped out from a semicircle of white-stemmed birches. She had
not seen Bruce since before Christmas. He had been angry at her then
because she had refused to let him drive her home from prayer meeting.
Since then she had heard a rumor that he was going to see Kitty Leigh
at the Upper Valley.

Judith looked sombrely down at the Marshall homestead. She had always
loved the quaint, picturesque old place, so different from all the
commonplace spick and span new houses of the prosperous valley. Judith
had never been able to decide whether she really cared very much for
Bruce Marshall or not, but she knew that she loved that rambling,
cornery house of his, with the gable festooned with the real ivy that
Bruce Marshall's great-grandmother had brought