ge country.

Could such achievement be for me?

"Please God!" I prayed right across into the sunset, "make me a full
cup that never fails him!"

I don't know how long I stood talking with God that way about my man,
but when I turned and looked back under the maples everybody was gone,
and I could hear the last rattle and whirl going down the hill. For a
second I felt that there was nobody but Him and me left on the hill, but
even in that second my heart knew better.

"Now?" I questioned myself softly, out over to the yellow moon that had
at last languidly and gracefully risen, putting the finishing touch to
the scene I had been planning for my proposal.

"Evelina," said the Crag quietly from where he stood leaning against the
tallest maple, "shall we stay here forever and ever, or hurry down
through the cemetery by the short cut to the station to say good-by to
the railroaders as they expect us to do?"

Nobody ever had a better opening than that, and I ought to have said,
"Be mine, be mine," with some sort of personal variation of the theme,
and have clapped him to my breast and been happy ever after. That is
what a courageous man would have done under the circumstances, with an
opportunity like that, but I got the worst kind of scare I ever
experienced, and answered:

"How much time have we got? Do you think we can make it?"

"Plenty," he answered comfortably as I began to quicken my pace to the
little gate that leads between the hedge into the little half-acre of
those who rest. Then as I tried to pass him, he caught my hand and made
me walk in the narrow path close at his side.

[Illustration: Scrounged so close to his arm that it was difficult for
both of them to walk.]

Now even a very strong-minded woman, who had to go through a little
graveyard with moonlight making the tombstones glower out from deep
shadows of cedar trees, in the depths of which strange birds croak,
while the wind rustles the dry leaves into piles as they fall, wouldn't
feel like honorably proposing to the man she intended to marry, even
if she was scrouged so close to his arm that it was difficult for both
of them to walk, would she?

I excuse myself this time, but I must hold myself to the same standard
that I want to hold Lee Greenfield to. How do I know that he hasn't had
all sorts of cold, creepy feeling's keeping him from proposing to
Caroline?

I hereby promise myself that I will ask Cousin James to marry me the
next favo