are for me at all, Ruth?"

The girl crumpled her wet handkerchief. "Ollie, you're the most
beautiful thing that ever happened except my father. He was beautiful,
too; indeed, indeed, he was. I'll never {8} think differently. I
can't. He tried so hard."

All the latent manliness in the boy came to the surface and showed
itself.

"Ruth, darling, I don't want you to think differently. It's right for
you to be loyal and feel as you do. You see, you know, and the world
doesn't. I'll take what you say and do as you wish. You must n't think
I'm on the other side. I'm not. I'm on your side, wherever that is.
When the time comes I'll show you. You may trust me, Ruth."

He was eager, pleading, earnest. He looked at the moment so good, so
loving and sincere, that the girl, out of her darker experience of
life, wondered wistfully if it were really true that Providence ever
let people just live their lives out like that being good, and
prosperous, and generous, advancing {9} from happiness to happiness,
instead of stubbing along painfully as she felt she had done, from one
bitter experience to another, learning to live by failures.

It must be beautiful to learn from successes instead, as it seemed to
her Oliver had done. How could any one refuse to share such a radiant
life when it was offered? As for loving Oliver, that was a foregone
conclusion. Still, she hesitated.

"You re awfully dear and good to me, Ollie," she said. "But I want you
to see father. I want you to go and talk to him about this, and know
him for yourself. I know I'm asking a hard thing of you, but, truly, I
believe it's best. If _he_ says it's all right for me to marry you, I
will if your family want me, of course," she added as an after
thought.

{10}

"Ought n't I to speak to your mother?" hesitated Oliver.

"Oh,--mother? Yes, I suppose she'd like it," said Ruth
absent-mindedly. "Mother has views about getting married, Ollie. I
dare say she'll want to tell you what they are. You must n't think
they're my views, though."

"I'd rather hear yours, Ruth."

She flashed a look at him that opened for him the heavenly deeps that
lie before the young and the loving, and he had a sudden vision of
their life as a long sunlit road, winding uphill, winding down, but
sunlit always--because looks like that illumine any dusk.

"I'll tell you my views--some day," Ruth said softly. "But first--"

"First I must talk to my father, your mother, your father." Olive