d she dimpled. "I think
you are splendid, Lawford!" she murmured.

It was a mean advantage to take of a young man. They were on the open
beach and every eye from the lighthouse to Tapp Point might be watching
them. Lawford groaned deeply--and looked it.

"Don't," she said. "I know it's because of me you have been driven to
work."

"You know that, Miss Grayling? Louise!"

"Yes. I had a little talk with your father. He's _such_ a funny man!"

"If you can find anything humorous about I. Tapp in his present mood
you are a wonder!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Louise!" He could not keep his
hungry gaze off her face.

"You're a nice boy, Lawford," she told him, nodding. "I liked you a
lot from the very first. Now I admire you."

"Oh, Louise!"

"Don't look like that at me," she commanded. "They'll see you.
And--and I feel as though I were about to be eaten."

"You will be," he said significantly. "I am coming to the store
to-night. Or shall I go to see your aunt first?"

"You'd better keep away from Aunt Euphemia, Lawford," she replied,
laughing gayly. "Wait till my daddy-prof comes home. See him."

"And you really love me? Do you? Please . . . dear!"

She nodded, pursing her lips.

"But eighteen dollars a week!" groaned Lawford. "I think the super
would have made it an even twenty if it hadn't been for dad."

"Never mind," she told him, almost gayly. "Maybe the invention will
make our fortune."

At that speech Lawford's cannibalistic tendencies were greatly and
visibly increased. Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a
thorough knowledge of her own heart. Having made up her mind that
Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would
approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man
know his good fortune.

Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind. Cap'n Abe said:

"Land sakes! you come 'way down here to the Cape to be took in by a
feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise? I thought you was a girl with too
much sense for that!"

"But what has love to do with sense, uncle?" she asked him, dimpling.

"Hi-mighty! I s'pect that's so. An', anyway, he does seem to improve.
He's really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father's candy
factories."

"But that's the one thing about him I'm not sure I approve of," sighed
Louise. "We could have so much better times if he and I could play
along the shore this summer and not have to think