ured me into
tobogganing off the barn?" Olive replied promptly. "Where was I? Oh,
yes,--begged me to tell you how well she remembered your kindness to
her--yes, your kindness--when she was a shy child from the country."

Reed's comment was a terse one.

"Shy! She!" he said.

"You sound like an Indian dialect. However--And that she should claim a
place among your earlier friends, when the time came when they could
sit with you."

Reed squirmed.

"Sit with! Oh, Lord! That settles it, Olive. In spite of all your
polite evasions, the town does look upon me as a moral asset, a chronic
case to be put upon a par with other charities," he said, with sudden
bitterness.

Olive's colour came, though not from annoyance.

"Don't be a dunce, Reed," she besought him. "You merely are the latest
sensation in returning prodigals; you haven't sufficient staying power
to become a charity, or even a fad. Then I shall tell the sympathetic
lady--?"

"To go to everlasting thunder," Reed growled ungratefully. "Hang it
all, Olive, does she think I want a row of hens coming to cluck above
the ruins?"

"Which reminds me," Olive rose; "when do you look for the conjugal
rooster?"

"Brenton? Sit down again; you're not in any hurry," Reed urged her.

But she shook her head.

"No; but I am a hen, and nobody knows when I may forget myself and
begin to cluck. No. Truly, Reed, my feelings are injured and I'm going
home."

"What's the use? You've nothing in the world to do."

"I beg your pardon, I have domestic cares. My blessed father has to go
to Boston at two-twenty. If I don't go home in season to arouse him to
the practical details inherent in the fact, he'll be starting off in
slippers and without his evening clothes. Really, Reed, I've got to
go."

"What are you going to do, this afternoon?" Reed's eyes were wishful,
for the time was hanging heavy in his idle hands. "Of course, though,
there's no sense in my being selfish."

Olive saw the wishfulness; but she ignored it. Both Professor Opdyke
and her father had told her that Reed's sentence was a long one, long
and heavy. Both Mrs. Opdyke and her husband had begged the girl to do
what she could to keep it from seeming too much like solitary
confinement. Olive was fond of Reed, though without the consciousness
of a single vein of sentiment to blur their friendship. She enjoyed his
society as much as she admired his virile, easy-going manliness. All
the more, on this account, s