LITMIR.BIZ

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you do," I added as quietly as I could.

      He looked angry for just the briefest instant, and then he burst into a hard laugh.

      "Caught, by Jupiter! Ruth, you were always too clever for me to deal with. Well, then, I do give the gossips plenty to talk about. They would talk just the same if I didn't, so I may as well have the game as the name."

      "Does that mean that your life is regulated by the gossips? I supposed that you had more independence, Tom."

      He flushed, and stooped down to pick up a stick. With this he began viciously to strike the bushes by the roadside and the dry stalks of yarrow sticking up through the snow. He set his lips together with a grim determination which brought out in his face the look I like least, the resemblance to his mother when she means to carry a point.

      "Look here, Ruth," he said after a moment; "I'm not going to talk to you about myself or my doings. I'm a blackguard fast enough; but there's no good talking about it. If you'd cared enough about me to keep me straight, you could have done it; but now I'm on my way to the Devil, and no great way to travel before I get there either."

      We had come to the turn of the Rim Road where the trees shut off the view of the houses of the village. I stopped and put my hand on his arm.

      "Tom," I begged him, "don't talk like that. You don't know how it hurts. You don't mean it; you can't mean it. Nobody but yourself can send you on the wrong road; and I know you're too plucky to hide behind any such excuse. For the sake of your father, Tom, do stop and think what you are doing."

      "Oh, father'll console himself very well with prayers; and anyway he'll thank God for sending me to perdition, because if God does it, it must be all right."

      "Don't, Tom! You know how he suffers at the way you go on. It must be terrible to have an only son, and to see him flinging his life away."

      "It isn't my fault that I'm his son, is it?" he demanded. "I've been dragged into this infernal life without being asked whether I wanted to come or not; and now I'm here, I can't have what I want, and I'm promised eternal damnation hereafter. Well, then, I'll show God or the Devil, or whoever bosses things, that I can't be bullied into a molly-coddle!"

      The sound of wheels interrupted us, and we instinctively began to walk onward in the most commonplace fashion. A farmer's wagon came along, and by the time it had passed we had come to the head of the Rim Road, in full sight of the houses. Tom waited until I turned to the right, toward home, and then he said, —

      "I'm going the other way. It's no use, Ruth, to talk to me; but I'm obliged to you for caring."

      I cannot see that I did any good, and very likely I have simply made him more on his guard to avoid giving me a chance; but then, even if I had all the chance in the world, what could I say to him? And yet, Tom is so noble a fellow underneath it all. He is honest and kind, and strong in his way; only between his father's meekness and his mother's sharpness – for she is sharp – he has somehow come to grief. They have tried to make him religious so that he would be good; and he is of the sort that must be good or he will not be religious. He cannot be pressed into a mould of orthodoxy, and so in the end – But it cannot be the end. Tom must somehow come out of it.

      January 13. When George came in to-night I was struck at once with the look of pleasant excitement in his face.

      "What pleases you?" I asked him.

      "Pleases me?" he echoed, evidently surprised. "Isn't it a pleasure to see you?"

      "But that's not the whole of it," I said. "You've something pleasant to tell me. Oh, I can read you like a book, my dear; so it is quite idle trying to keep a secret from me."

      He seemed confused, and I was puzzled to know what was the matter.

      "You are too wise entirely," was his reply. "I really hadn't anything to tell."

      "Then something good has happened," I persisted; "or you have heard good news."

      "What a fanciful girl you are, Ruth," George returned. "Nothing has happened."

      He walked away from me, and went to the fire. He was strangely embarrassed, and I could only wonder what I had said to confuse him. I reflected that perhaps he was planning some sort of a surprise, and felt I ought not to pry into his thoughts in this fashion whatever the matter was that interested him. I sat down on the other side of the hearth, and took up some sewing.

      "George," I asked, entirely at random, "didn't you say that the Miss West you met at Franklin is a cousin of the Watsons?"

      I flushed as soon as I had spoken, for I thought how it betrayed me that in my desire to hit on a new subject I had found the thought of her so near the surface of my mind. I had not consciously been thinking of her at all, and certainly I did not connect her with George's strangeness of manner. There was something almost weird, it seems to me now, in my putting such a question just then. Perhaps it was telepathy, for she must have been vividly in his thoughts at that moment. He started, flushed as I have never seen him, and turned quickly toward me.

      "What makes you think that it was Miss West?"

      "Think what was Miss West?" I cried.

      I was completely astonished; then I saw how it was.

      "Never mind, George," I went on, laughing and putting out my hand to him. "I didn't mean to read your thoughts, and I didn't realize that I was doing it."

      "But what made you" —

      "I'm sure I don't know," I broke in; and I managed to laugh again. "Only I see now that you know something pleasant about Miss West, and you may as well tell it."

      He looked doubtful a minute, studying my face. The hesitation he had in speaking hurt me.

      "It's only that she's coming to visit the Watsons," he said, rather unwillingly. "Olivia Watson told me just now."

      "Why, that will be pleasant," I answered, as brightly as if I were really delighted. "Now I shall see if she is really as pretty as you say."

      I felt so humiliated to be playing a part, – so insincere. Somebody has said the real test of love is to be unwilling to deceive the loved one, even in the smallest thing. That may be the test of a man's love, but a woman will bear the pain of that very deception to save the man she cares for from disquiet. I am sure it has hurt me as much not to be entirely frank with George as it could have hurt a man; but I could not make him uncomfortable by letting him see that I was disturbed. Yet that he should have been afraid or unwilling to tell me did trouble me. He knows that I am not jealous or apt to take offense. He is always saying that I am too cold to be really in love. It made me feel that the coming of this girl must mean much to him when he feared to speak of it. If he had not thought it a matter of consequence, he would have realized that I should take it lightly.

      I am not taking it lightly; but what troubles me is not that she is coming, but that he hesitated to tell me. Something is wrong when George fears to trust me.

      January 17. I have seen her. I went to church this morning for that especial reason. Mother was a little astonished at me when I said that I was going.

      "Well, Ruth," she said, "you don't have much dissipation, but I didn't suppose that you were so dull you would take to church-going."

      "You can never tell," I answered, making a jest of a thing which to me was far from funny. "Mr. Saychase will be sure to conclude I'm under conviction of sin, and come in to finish the conversion."

      She looked at me keenly.

      "What is the matter, Ruth?" she asked in that soft voice of hers which goes straight to my heart.

      "It isn't anything very serious, Mother," I said. "Since you will have the truth, I am going to church to see that Miss West who's visiting the Watsons. George thinks her so pretty that my curiosity is roused to a perfect bonfire."

      She did not say more, but I saw the sudden light in her eye. Mother has never felt about George as I have wished. She has never done him justice, and she thinks I idealize him. That is her favorite way of putting it; but this is because she is my mother, and doesn't see how much idealizing there must have been on his side before he could fall in love with me.

      Miss

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