ghtful
idea came into his head! "Maimie," he said, "will you marry me?"

Now, strange to tell, the same idea had come at exactly the same time
into Maimie's head. "I should like to," she answered, "but will there be
room in your boat for two?"

"If you squeeze close," he said eagerly.

"Perhaps the birds would be angry?"

He assured her that the birds would love to have her, though I am not so
certain of it myself. Also that there were very few birds in winter.
"Of course they might want your clothes," he had to admit rather
falteringly.

She was somewhat indignant at this.

"They are always thinking of their nests," he said apologetically, "and
there are some bits of you"--he stroked the fur on her pelisse--"that
would excite them very much."

"They sha'n't have my fur," she said sharply.

"No," he said, still fondling it, however, "no! Oh, Maimie," he said
rapturously, "do you know why I love you? It is because you are like a
beautiful nest."

Somehow this made her uneasy. "I think you are speaking more like a bird
than a boy now," she said, holding back, and indeed he was even
looking rather like a bird. "After all," she said, "you are only a
Betwixt-and-Between." But it hurt him so much that she immediately
added, "It must be a delicious thing to be."

"Come and be one then, dear Maimie," he implored her, and they set off
for the boat, for it was now very near Open-Gate time. "And you are not
a bit like a nest," he whispered to please her.

"But I think it is rather nice to be like one," she said in a woman's
contradictory way. "And, Peter, dear, though I can't give them my fur, I
wouldn't mind their building in it. Fancy a nest in my neck with little
spotty eggs in it! Oh, Peter, how perfectly lovely!"

But as they drew near the Serpentine, she shivered a little, and said,
"Of course I shall go and see mother often, quite often. It is not as
if I was saying good-bye for ever to mother, it is not in the least like
that."

"Oh, no," answered Peter, but in his heart he knew it was very like
that, and he would have told her so had he not been in a quaking fear
of losing her. He was so fond of her, he felt he could not live without
her. "She will forget her mother in time, and be happy with me," he kept
saying to himself, and he hurried her on, giving her thimbles by the
way.

But even when she had seen the boat and exclaimed ecstatically over its
loveliness, she still talked tremblingly about her mot