heeks
between her hands, and bringing his knit brows down to the level of her
humid blue eyes said, "You haven't kissed me yet. What's the matter?"

"Doesn't it strike you that I might ask that question, considering that
it's three days since I've seen you, and that you left me, in a rather
awkward position, to explain matters to your mother?" he said coldly.
He had formulated the sentence in his mind some moments before, but now
that it was uttered, it appeared singularly weak and impotent.

"That's so," she said with a frank laugh, burying her face in his
waistcoat. "You see, dandy boy"--his pet name--"I reckoned for that
reason we'd better lie low for a day or two. Well," she continued,
untying his cravat and retying it again, "how DID you crawl out of it?"

"Do you mean to say your mother did not tell you?" he asked indignantly.

"Why should she?" returned Cressy lazily. "She never talks to me of
these things, honey."

"And you knew nothing about it?"

Cressy shook her head, and then winding one of her long braids around
the young man's neck, offered the end of it to his mouth, and on his
sternly declining it, took it in her own.

Yet even her ignorance of what had really happened did not account
to the master for the indifference of her long silence, and albeit
conscious of some inefficiency in his present unheroic attitude, he
continued sarcastically, "May I ask WHAT you imagined would happen when
you left me?"

"Well," said Cressy confidently, "I reckoned, chile, you could lie as
well as the next man, and that, being gifted, you'd sling Maw something
new and purty. Why, I ain't got no fancy, but I fixed up something
against Paw's questioning ME. I made that conceited Masters promise to
swear that HE was in the barn with me. Then I calculated to tell Paw
that you came meandering along just before Maw popped in, and that I
skedaddled to join Masters. Of course," she added quickly, tightening
her hold of the master as he made a sudden attempt at withdrawal, "I
didn't let on to Masters WHY I wanted him to promise, or that you were
there."

"Cressy," said Ford, irritated beyond measure, "are you mad, or do you
think I am?"

The girl's face changed. She cast a half frightened, half questioning
glance at his eyes and then around the darkening aisle. "If we're going
to quarrel, Jack," she said hurriedly, "don't let's do it BEFORE FOLKS."

"In the name of Heaven," he said, following her eyes indignantly, "wha