ou. That's because I have been here longer and
am more used to the darkness. I think I've been here about a year." He
felt her shudder. "You don't know how glad I am to see you."

"No gladder than I am to feel you," he answered gayly. "It's worth the
price of admission to find you here, girl o'mine."

He had forgotten the pretense that still lay between them, so far as
words went when they had last parted. Nor did it yet occur to him
that he had swept aside the convention of her being a boy. But she was
vividly aware of it, and aware, too, of the demand his last words had
made for a recognition of the relationship that existed in feeling
between them.

"I knew you knew I was a girl," she murmured.

"You knew more than that," he challenged joyfully.

But, in woman's way, she ignored his frontal attack. He was going at too
impetuous a speed for her reluctance. "How long have you known that I
wasn't a boy--not from the first, surely?"

"I don't know why I didn't, but I didn't. I was sure locoed," he
confessed. "It was when you came out dressed as a gypsy that I knew.
That explained to me a heap of things I never had understood before
about you."

"It explained, I suppose, why I never had licked the stuffing out of any
other kid, and why you did not get very far in making a man out of me as
you promised," she mocked.

"Yes, and it explained how you happened to say you were eighteen. By
mistake you let the truth slip out. Course I wouldn't believe it."

"I remember you didn't. I think you conveyed the impression to me
diplomatically that you had doubts."

"I said it was a lie," he laughed. "I sure do owe you a heap of
apologies for being so plumb dogmatic when you knew best. You'll have to
sit down on me hard once in a while, or there won't be any living with
me."

Blushingly she did some more ignoring. "That was the first time you
threatened to give me a whipping," she recalled aloud.

"My goodness! Did I ever talk so foolish?"

"You did, and meant it."

"But somehow I never did it. I wonder why I didn't."

"Perhaps I was so frail you were afraid you would break me."

"No, that wasn't it. In the back of my haid somewhere there was an
instinct that said: 'Bucky, you chump, if you don't keep your hands off
this kid you'll be right sorry all your life.' Not being given to many
ideas, I paid a heap of respect to that one."

"Well, it's too bad, for I probably needed that whipping, and now you'll
never be a