Supper was over at
seven o'clock, and Lark said, with something of wistfulness in her
voice, "I'm going out to the orchard for a farewell weep all by myself.
And don't any of you disturb me,--I'm so ugly when I cry."

So she set out alone, and Jim, a little awkwardly, suggested that Carol
take a turn or so up and down the lane with him. Mrs. Forrest stood at
the window and watched them, tearful-eyed, but with tenderness.

"My little boy," she said to herself, "my little boy. But she's a dear,
sweet, pretty girl."

In the meantime, Jim was acquitting himself badly. His face was pale. He
was nervous, ill at ease. He stammered when he spoke. Self-consciousness
was not habitual to this young man of the Iowa farm. He was not the
awkward, ignorant, gangling farm-hand we meet in books and see on
stages. He had attended the high school in Mount Mark, and had been
graduated from the state agricultural college with high honors. He was a
farmer, as his father had been before him, but he was a farmer of the
new era, one of those men who takes plain farming and makes it a
profession, almost a fine art. Usually he was self-possessed, assertive,
confident, but, in the presence of this sparkling twin, for once he was
abashed.

Carol was in an ecstasy of delight. She was not a man-eater, perhaps,
but she was nearly romance-mad. She thought only of the wild excitement
of having a sure-enough lover, the hurt of it was yet a little beyond
her grasp. "Oh, Carol, don't be so sweet," Lark had begged her once.
"How can the boys help being crazy about you, and it hurts them." "It
doesn't hurt anything but their pride when they get snubbed," had been
the laughing answer. "Do you want to break men's hearts?" "Well,--it's
not at all bad for a man to have a broken heart," the irrepressible
Carol had insisted. "They never amount to anything until they have a
real good disappointment. Then they brace up and amount to something.
See? I really think it's a kindness to give them a heart-break, and get
them started."

The callow youths of Mount Mark, of the Epworth League, and the college,
were almost unanimous in laying their adoration at Carol's feet. But
Carol saw the elasticity, the buoyancy, of loves like these, and she
couldn't really count them. She felt that she was ripe for a bit of
solid experience now, and there was nothing callow about Jim--he was
solid enough. And now, although she could see that his feelings stirred,
she felt nothing