ds again.'

'If I thought that was goin' to be true,' said Paul, 'do you know what
I'd do?'

'No, I don't,' she answered, 'and I don't want to.'

'I'd hull myself into that brook this minute and never come out again.'

'You'd do what? she asked.

To 'hull' is to hurl in the dialect Paul spoke in youth. The word was
strange to her.

'I'd throw myself into that brook this minute, and never come out
again.'

'Oh, you wicked boy!' she cried, but her eyes sparkled with triumph. She
quenched the sparkle. 'It _is_ true; and after that piece of wickedness,
it's truer than ever.'

Paul rose to his feet; his face was white, and his eyes stared as they
had done when she had just rescued him.

'Good-bye, May,' he said.

'Good-bye,' she answered coolly.

'You're never goin' to be friends any more, May?'

'No,' she said, but rose to her feet with a shriek, for Paul had taken
two swift paces, and had plunged back into the brook, clothes and all.
'Paul!' she shrilled after him. 'Paul! Don't ee drown. Don't ee now.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't ee!'

Paul stood shoulder-deep in the stream, and she besought him from the
bank with clasped hands and frightened eyes.

'Goin' to be friends,' said Paul grimly.

'Yes, yes, yes!' she cried. 'Come out, do, there's a dear!'

Paul reached the bank in a stroke, and climbed back into the meadow.
The instant he gained his feet she rushed at him and boxed his ears
furiously. Paul laughed with pleasure. He had had his head punched by
every fighting peer within a mile of home, and the soft little hands
fell like a sort of fairy snowflakes.

'Oh, you wicked, wicked, wicked boy!' she raged, stamping her foot at
him. 'You can go in again as soon as ee want to. _I_ won't be so fullish
as to call ee out.'

'D'ye mean it?' asked Paul, suddenly grim again.

'No,' she said, fawning on him with her hands, but doing it at a
distance for fear of his wet clothes. 'But, Paul, child, you'll catch
your death. Run home.'

'I'm not a child,' said Paul. 'I'm within two years as old as you are,
May. I say, May------'

'Oh, do run home!' she coaxed him. 'Do ee, now, Paul, for my sake.'

'I'm off,' said Paul. 'Ask me anything like that, and I'll walk into
fire _or_ water.'

'Why, Paul,' said the little Vanity, turning her face down, and looking
up at him past her beautiful lashes and arched brows, 'whatever makes
you talk like that?'

'Because it's the simple truth,' said Paul 'You try m