m, and the agitation of the
last few minutes seemed to have carried them in a bound past all the
formalities of early acquaintance.

"Right you are!" he said briskly. "I like a straight girl. But if you
don't mind we won't speak of it before the mater. She's a bit nervous,
and would be always imagining that the girls were going to have the same
experience. You might warn Lady Hayes not to speak of it either. We'll
keep it a secret between us."

"Just as you like! I _believe_," said Darsie shrewdly, "that you're
afraid of being praised and fussed over, as you would be if people knew
that you had saved my life! Men hate a fuss, but you can't escape my
gratitude. I didn't want to die. It came over me with a sort of
horror--the thought of leaving the flowers, and the trees, and the blue
sky, and all the people I love. Have you ever been so nearly dead to
know how it feels?"

"Once--when I had enteric at school. It was a near squeak at the
crisis."

"And how did you feel? What did you think?"

"I didn't care a whit one way or another. I wanted to have the pillow
turned. That seemed a hundred times more important than life or death;
I was too ill to think... Well, thank goodness, you are _not_ dead! I
hope you'll live for many years to be a pride and glory to--er--er--the
ranks of women blue-stockings!"

Darsie looked at him sharply.

"The girls have been telling you of my ambitions! Mean of them! They
might have known you'd scoff. All boys do, but I fail to see why if a
girl has brains she should not use them as well as a man."

"The inference being--"

"Certainly! I'm unusually clever for my years!" returned Darsie
proudly, whereupon they simultaneously burst into a peal of laughter.

"Well, you goaded me to it!" Darsie declared in self-vindication. "I
can't stand it when boys are superior. Why must they sneer and jeer
because a girl wants to go in for the same training as themselves,
especially when she has to make her own living afterwards? In our two
cases it's more important for me than for you, for you will be a rich
landowner, and I shall be a poor school marm. You ought to be kind and
sympathetic, and do all you can to cheer me on, instead of being lofty
and blighting."

Ralph Percival looked down at her with his handsome, quizzical eyes--

"I don't mind betting that _you'll_ never be a school marm!" he said
calmly; and at that very moment, round a bend of the path, the two gir