ear takes on its encircling layer of wood, but the
layers of a century still enclose the heart of a sprig that burst forth
upon a spring morning from its mother acorn.

For a moment after Rita asked Dic where he got the ring he regretted he
had not bought it, but he said:--

"Billy Little gave it to me that I might give it to you; so it really is
his present."

A shade of disappointment spread over her face, but it lasted only a
moment.

"But you give it to me," she said. "It was really yours, and you give it
to me. I am almost glad it comes from Billy Little. He has been so much
to me. You are by nature different from other men, but the best
difference we owe to Billy Little." The pronoun "we" was significant. It
meant that she also was Billy Little's debtor for the good he had
brought to Dic, since now that wonderful young man belonged to her.

"I wonder where he got it?" asked the girl.

"I don't know," replied Dic. "He said he valued it above all else he
possessed, and told me it had brought him his sweetest joy and his
bitterest grief. I think he gave it to a sweetheart long years ago, and
she was compelled to return it and to marry another man. I am only
guessing. I don't know."

"Perhaps we had better not keep it," returned the girl, with a touch of
her forest-life superstition. "It might bring the same fate to us. I
could not bear it, Dic, now. I should die. Before you spoke to
me--before that night of Scott's social--it would have been hard enough
for me to--to--but now, Dic, I couldn't bear to lose you, nor to marry
another. I could not; indeed, I could not. Let us not keep the ring."

Dic's ardor concerning the ring was dampened, but he said:--

"Nonsense, Rita, you surprise me. Nothing can come between us."

"I fear others have thought the same way. Perhaps Billy Little and his
sweetheart"--she was almost ready for tears.

"Yes, but what can come between us? Your parents, I hope, won't object.
Mine won't, and we don't--do we?" said Dic, argumentatively.

"Ah," answered Rita with her lips, but her eyes, whose language Dic was
beginning to comprehend, said a great deal more than can be expressed in
mere words.

"Then what save death can separate us?" asked Dic. "We would offend
Billy Little by returning the ring, and it looks pretty on your finger.
Don't you like it, Rita?"

"Y-e-s," she responded, her head bent doubtingly to one side, as she
glanced down at the ring.

"You don't feel supers