h windows that
had climbing-roses all about them in summer. About the dresser were
photographs of adoring high-school boys; and one of Guy Franklin,
much groomed and barbered, in a dress-coat and a boutonniere. I
never liked to see that photograph there. The home boys looked
properly modest and bashful on the dresser, but he seemed to be
staring impudently all the time.

I knew nothing definite against Guy, but in Riverbend all
"traveling-men" were considered worldly and wicked. He traveled for
a Chicago dry-goods firm, and our fathers didn't like him because he
put extravagant ideas into our mothers' heads. He had very smooth
and nattering ways, and he introduced into our simple community a
great variety of perfumes and scented soaps, and he always reminded
me of the merchants in Caesar, who brought into Gaul "those things
which effeminate the mind," as we translated that delightfully easy
passage.

Nell was silting before the dressing-table in her nightgown, holding
the new fur coat and rubbing her cheek against it, when I saw a
sudden gleam of tears in her eyes. "You know, Peggy," she said in
her quick, impetuous way, "this makes me feel bad. I've got a secret
from my daddy."

I can see her now, so pink and eager, her brown hair in two springy
braids down her back, and her eyes shining with tears and with
something even softer and more tremulous.

"I'm engaged, Peggy," she whispered, "really and truly."

She leaned forward, unbuttoning her nightgown, and there on her
breast, hung by a little gold chain about her neck, was a diamond
ring--Guy Franklin's solitaire; every one in Riverbend knew it well.

"I'm going to live in Chicago, and take singing lessons, and go to
operas, and do all those nice things--oh, everything! I know you
don't like him, Peggy, but you know you _are_ a kid. You'll see how
it is yourself when you grow up. He's so _different_ from our boys,
and he's just terribly in love with me. And then, Peggy,"--flushing
all down over her soft shoulders,--"I'm awfully fond of him, too.
Awfully."

"Are you, Nell, truly?" I whispered. She seemed so changed to me by
the warm light in her eyes and that delicate suffusion of color. I
felt as I did when I got up early on picnic mornings in summer, and
saw the dawn come up in the breathless sky above the river meadows
and make all the cornfields golden.

"Sure I do, Peggy; don't look so solemn. It's nothing to look that
way about, kid. It's nice." She t