ty-five.
He stopped and looked back at her, with a beaming countenance, like a
boy's.

She was standing on the step above him, looking down at him with a
pleasant but serious expression. "I am going to trust you never to
repeat to me what you have said to-night. I know I can trust you."

"So be it, White Rose," he returned, with so rapid and involuntary a
change of attitude, voice, and expression, that the pang of his hurt
pierced her heart also. "But I know I can trust you," she repeated, as
if she had not seen that shrinking from the blow. "And I am going to try
to make your life a little pleasanter, and more like other people's.
When you are dressed up, and ordered to behave properly, and made to
look as handsome as you can, so that ladies shall take notice of you and
flatter you with their eyes and tongues, and you come to have the same
interest in the world that other men have--and why shouldn't you?--then
your imagination will not be running away with you, or making angels out
of common little persons like myself--how dreadfully prosy and
commonplace you have no idea! And I forbid you to allow Willie to stick
your hat full of flowers, when you go fishing together; and order you to
make that young impudence respectful to you on all occasions--asserting
your authority, if necessary. And, lastly, I prefer you should not call
me Madame Rumway until I have a certified and legal claim to the title.
Good-night."

He stood bareheaded, his face drooping and half-concealed, pulling the
withered flowers out of his hat. Slowly he raised it, made a military
salute, and placed it on his head. "It is for you to command and me to
obey," he said.

"Breakfast at seven o'clock precisely," called out the tuneful voice of
Mrs. Smiley after him, as he went down the garden-path with bent head,
walking more like an old man than she had ever seen him. Then she went
into the house, closed it carefully, after the manner of lone women, and
went up to her room. But deliciously cool and fragrant as was the tiny
chamber, Mrs. Smiley could not sleep that night. Nor did Chillis come to
breakfast next morning.

A month passed away. Work was suspended on Mr. Rumway's house, the doors
and windows boarded up, and the gate locked. Everybody knew it could
mean but one thing--that Mrs. Smiley had refused the owner. But the
handsome captain put a serene face upon it, and kept about his business
industriously and like a gentleman. The fact that he d