ers he, holding her to his heart and
pressing his lips to her fair, cool cheek, "since you are my own,--my
sweet,--my beloved. But call me Tedcastle, won't you?"

"It is too long a name."

"Then alter it, and call me----"

"Teddy? I think I like that best; and perhaps I shall have it all to
myself."

"I am afraid not," laughing. "All the fellows in the regiment
christened me 'Teddy' before I had been in a week."

"Did they? Well, never mind; it only shows what good taste they had.
The name just suits you, you are so fair and young, and handsome," says
Molly, patting his cheek with considerable condescension. "Now, one
thing more before we go in to receive our scolding: you are not to make
love to me again--not even to mention the word--until a whole week has
passed: promise."

"I could not."

"You must."

"Well, then, it will be a pie-crust promise."

"No, I forbid you to break it. I can endure a little of it now and
again," says Molly, with intense seriousness, "but to be made love to
always, every day, would kill me."

CHAPTER VII.

"Then they sat down and talked
Of their friends at home ...

* * *

And related the wondrous adventure."

--_Courtship of Miles Standish._

"Do exert yourself," says Molly. "I never saw any one so lazy. You
don't pick one to my ten."

"I can't see how you make that out," says her companion in an injured
tone. "For the last three minutes you have sat with your hands in your
lap arguing about what you don't understand in the least, while I have
been conscientiously slaving; and before that you ate two for every one
you put in the basket."

"I never heard any one talk so much as you do, when once fairly
started," says Molly. "Here, open your mouth until I put in this
strawberry; perhaps it will stop you."

"And I find it impossible to do anything with this umbrella," says
Luttrell, still ungrateful, eying with much distaste the ancient
article he holds aloft: "it is abominably in the way. I wouldn't mind
if you wanted it, but you cannot with that gigantic hat you are
wearing. May I put it down?"

"Certainly not, unless you wish me to have a sun-stroke. Do you?"

"No, but I really think----"

"Don't think," says Molly: "it is too fatiguing; and if you get used up
now, I don't see what Letitia will do for her jam."

"Why do people make jam?" asks Luttrell, despairingly; "they wouldn't
if they had the picking of it: and