“But, Miss Bessie—”

“I have told you a dozen times, Mr. Granton, that my name is not Bessie. I abhor that final ie; and more than that, I was christened Betty,—plain Betty,—and Betty I will be.”

“Miss Betty, then, if that suits you; though why you should be so particular about that old-fashioned name, I’m sure I can’t conceive.”

“In the first place, it is my name,” Betty replied, bending upon him a glance at once bewitching and tantalizing; “that ought to count for something; and in the second place, my family name isn’t one that lends itself to soft prefixes. Besides all which, there has been a Betty Mork from time immemorial; and I shall never be one to spoil the line by changing my name.”

“What?” Mr. Granton demanded mischievously. “Never change it? Are you vowed to eternal single blessedness, then, or shall you imitate the women’s-rights women, who—”

“It is really none of your affair what I intend to do,” returned she, bridling; “only, to go back to what we started on, I do intend to play in the tournament with Frank Bradford. I am not in the habit of breaking my promises.”

The pair walked along the shady country road without speaking for a moment or two, the young man inclined to be sulky, his companion saucy and good-natured. The dropping sunshine, falling through the gently waving elm-boughs, struck golden lights out of Miss Mork’s abundant chestnut hair,—her one beauty, it amused her to call it, although the smile which brought out her dimples and the lustre of her eyes contradicted the words even while they were being spoken. Young Granton was fully alive to the attractiveness of the lithe figure beside him; indeed, for his own peace of mind, far too keenly. He was aware, too, of the difficulty of managing the wilful beauty, whose independence was sufficiently understood by all the summer idlers at Maugus.

“But you certainly knew I expected you to play in the tournament with me,” he began again, returning to the attack.

“It isn’t modest for a girl ever to know what a man expects of her until she’s told,” Betty replied demurely, “even in tennis. And besides, it was presumptuous for you to be so royally certain of my acquiescence in whatever you deigned to plan.”

“I’ll serve a cut so that you’ll never be able to return it,” threatened he.

“I can serve a cut myself,” she retorted, with an accent which seemed to indicate a double significance in the words.

“Confound it!” he said, incisively, with sudden and inconsistent change of base, “it is perfect folly letting ladies into a tournament anyway. Who wants them? They always make trouble.”

“I understood that you wanted one,” Betty answered, unmoved, observing the fringe of her parasol with great apparent interest; “but of course I knew your invitation was not to be taken too seriously.”

“Oh, bother!” the young man cried, slashing viciously at the head of a late-blooming daisy. “Why do you always insist on quarrelling with me?”

“Are we really quarrelling?” she laughed back with her most exasperating lightness of manner. “How delightful! If there is one thing that I enjoy more than I do tennis, it is a good quarrel.”

“Tennis!” Granton retorted, the last shreds of his patience giving way. “It must be allowed that you can quarrel better than you can play. No girl,” he went on, with increasing acerbity, “can ever really play tennis: she only plays at playing it; and it spoils any man’s game to play with her. For my part, I cannot see why they are to be admitted to the tournament at all.”

“Merci!” exclaimed Mistress Betty, stopping in the sun-dappled way to make him a profound courtesy. “Now I know what your true sentiments are, and how much your invitation was worth. Thank you for nothing, Mr. Nat Granton. I wish you luck of your partner,—when you get one. It is a cruel shame that by the rules of the tournament it must be a girl!”

And before Granton was able to reply or knew what she intended, pretty Miss Mork, with her tripping gait, her bright eyes, ugly name, and all, had whisked through a turnstile and was half-way across the lawn of the cottage where her particular bosom-friend Miss Dora Mosely was spending the summer.

II.

While Granton continued his perturbed way down the lovely village street to the Elm House, which for the time being was the home of a pleasant colony of summer idlers seeking rest and diversion in Maugus, Miss Betty flitted lightly over the lawn and joined her friend, whom she found reposing in a hammock swung under the cool veranda.

“Oh, Dolly,” was her breathless salutation, “I’ve got the awfullest thing to do! But I’ll do it, or perish in the attempt!”

“Halloo, Betty!” was Miss Mosely’s response and greeting; “how like a whirlwind you are! What is the matter? What have you got to do?”

“Beat Mr. Granton at tennis in the tournament.”

“You and Mr. Bradford, you mean?”

“No; I mean all by myself,—in a single. I sha’n’t play in the double at all, if I can get out of it without sneaking.”

“What in the world has happened to bring you to this desperate frame of mind?”

“Well, Dolly, the fact is, Mr. Granton has been making himself particularly odious because I wouldn’t throw over Frank Bradford to play with him, and—”

“I told you,” her friend interrupted judicially, examining the toe of her slipper with much interest and satisfaction, “that you’d be sorry you agreed to play with Frank.”

“But I’m not sorry,” protested the other, with spirit. “Do you think I’m so bound up in Nat Granton that I can’t get on without him? If he wanted me to play with him why didn’t he ask me, instead of taking it for granted, in that insufferably conceited way of his, that I’d stand about and wait on his lordship’s leisure? Oh, I’ll pay him off! I shall go over to grandmother’s every blessed day from now until the tournament and practise, so as to take down his top-loftical airs.”

At which exhibition of spite and determination Miss Mosely fell to laughing, and said Betty’s manner suggested pickled limes, which in turn reminded her of the chocolate-creams they had at boarding-school, and that brought to mind some particularly delicious marshmallows which had been saved until Betty should come over; and she added that it would be a very good plan to go into the house and devour them.

Over the flabby and inane confection with which the two friends regaled themselves, it was arranged that Dora should devote herself with Machiavelian shrewdness to bringing about a reconciliation between Frank Bradford and his betrothed, Flora Sturtevant, whose quarrel had led to the invitation which had involved Betty in her present difficulties. In the meantime, Mistress Mork was to give herself with great assiduity to the practice of cutting, volleying, and such devices of skill or cunning as would make possible the realization of her bold plan of conquering Mr. Granton in the tennis tournament, over which all the young people were just then much excited.

These conclusions were not reached without much digression, circumlocution, and irrelevant discourse upon various matters, with a good deal of consideration of the dress which would be both convenient and becoming for the important games.

“I have almost a mind to try a divided skirt,” Betty said thoughtfully. “George saw one at a tournament in England, and it could be fixed so as not— Oh, Dora, if George were only here! He knows all the new English rules and cuts, and all sorts of quirks. Oh, why did you have to quarrel with him just now? Now I shall lose my tennis just because you drove him away from Maugus.”

“Why, Betty Mork! You said yourself you wouldn’t stand his lordly ways; you know you did.”

“Of course,” returned her friend illogically; “but we both agreed that you’d have to make up with him some time; and I didn’t know then that I should want him.”

“But what could I do?” demanded Dora, divided between a sense of being deserted by her friend and a desire to have difficulties smoothed over. “Any girl with decent pride would have had to send George away. You know how I hated to do it.”

“But you might send for him now.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. That would be too awfully humiliating. I wonder you can propose it.”

“Men are so dreadful,” sighed Betty.

The two forlorn victims of masculine perversity pensively ate marshmallows in silence for a moment, revolving, no doubt, the most profound reflections upon the vanity of human affairs.

“I’ll tell you what I will do,” Betty said at length, reflectively. “I’ll write to George and make him visit grandmother. He hasn’t been there for a year, to stay; and, as grandmother says, she ‘admires to have him.’ I’ll tell him if he’ll stay there, out of sight, I think I can fix things with you.”

“Oh, you delicious, darling hypocrite!” exclaimed her friend, embracing her rapturously. “You are a perfect treasure, Bet! I’ll do anything to help you,—anything. I’ve been perfectly wretched ever since George went away; but of course I couldn’t say so, if I’d died.”

III.

“So you are not going to play with Bradford, after all?” Nat Granton said, flinging himself on the turf at Miss Mork’s feet as she sat watching the tennis-players practising for the tournament.

“No,” she answered. “He and Flora have recovered from their temporary alienation, and I was generous and took myself out of the way.”

“Will you play with me?”

“Thank you; no. I shall not go into any team; and in any case, I know too well your sentiments on the subject of girls’ playing to trespass on your good nature.”

“Then I shall not play,” he said, rather crossly.

“And pray what do I care if you don’t?”

“It would be polite to pretend to, at any rate.”

she quoted, twirling her gay parasol swiftly on its handle. “Do see Tom Carruth serve. That cut is my despair.”

“It is simple enough to return,” Granton answered, “if you know when it is coming: you’ve only to run up.”

“Yes, but how is one to know when it is coming?”

“One always can tell when I give it,” he replied, laughing, “for I always fling my head back.”

There came a wicked sparkle of intelligence into Betty’s eyes as she made a mental note of this confession for future use. Then the long lashes fell demurely over her cheeks as she gathered together her belongings and rose.

“I must go over to grandmother’s,” she said. “Never spend the summer near your grandmother’s, Mr. Granton: she may be ill and absorb all your spare time.”

And away sped the deceitful damsel, on nefarious schemes intent, to play tennis with her cousin George, who had responded with celerity to her summons. She was really improving with a good deal of rapidity. She had been a sad romp in her day, and every prank of her tomboy girlhood stood her in good stead now. Every fence and tree she had climbed, to the unspeakable horror and scandal of elderly spinster aunts, every game of ball for which she had been lectured by an eminently proper governess, every stolen fishing-expedition and hoydenish race whose improprieties my lady buried with overwhelming scorn in the oblivion of the past, had been a preparation for the struggle into which she now threw herself with the whole force of mind and body.

Her cousin George Snow, who was sufficiently fond of his mischievous cousin, and duly grateful for her supposed good offices in arranging the difficulties between himself and Dora, was an invaluable ally. He was taken into full confidence, and embraced the project most heartily. Granton was a right nice fellow, he admitted, but it certainly would not hurt him to be taken down a peg. Snow had just returned from England, where he had seen some of the finest tennis-players perform.

“You play too near the net,” he said. “All American players do. Play well back, and above everything, put all your force into the return.”

“But I shall send the ball out of the court,” Betty protested.

“You mustn’t. Drive it down as hard as ever you can. Strength—or rather swiftness—tells; if your service is swift enough it is worth all the fancy cuts in the world. The Renshaws make half their points by volleying from the service-line, and the rest by swift service.”

“Swiftness is the word,” Betty returned gayly. “Anything more?”

“Get used to striking back-handed; don’t try to turn your thumb down; make a business of an out-and-out back-handed, wrong-side-of-the-racquet stroke.”

How sound all this advice was, tennis players may determine for themselves; but it certainly served its purpose well. Betty was a promising pupil. Morning, noon, and night she played, working with an assiduity which nearly fagged her cousin out.

“You are plucky, Betty,” he declared one day. “I’m afraid for my own laurels. And by the way, am I to be allowed to be present at this great tournament in which you are to cover yourself and your sex with glory?”

“Oh, yes; you are to challenge Mr. Granton if he beats me,—though he sha’n’t! Anybody can challenge the winner, you know. That’s a provision I had put in myself to cover my own case.”

“Poor Granton!” George laughed. “Little does he dream of the awful humiliation in store for him.”

Betty set her lips together and nodded her head in a determined way.

“George,” she declared, with tragic earnestness, “if I get beaten I shall go straight home and die of—”

“Baffled stubbornness,” interpolated her cousin.

“Thwarted vengeance,” suggested Dora.

“No, of righteous indignation. Come, one set more before we drive back to Maugus. Only two days left, you know.”

IV.

The morning of the second day of the tournament dawned clear, and what was quite as much to the purpose, unusually cool. A little breeze from the northwest crept over the hills,—just enough to fan the heated players without disturbing the flight of the balls; while to make the weather perfect for tennis, by ten o’clock a light veil of clouds had comfortably covered the sun, cutting off all troublesome rays.

“It is a perfect day,” Betty remarked to Dora, as they took their places among the spectators. “I’ve put my things ready so I can dress in two minutes. Here comes George.”

The affair was an event in quiet Maugus. It had been talked about as the most important event could not have been discussed anywhere but in the idle hours of summer leisure, and had come to be regarded as quite the event of the season. The tennis-court was laid out near the Elm House, and was surrounded by superb old trees that in all the slow years of their growth had never over-arched a prettier sight than that afternoon showed, with its groups of nice old ladies, and charming young damsels in all the picturesque bravery of their nineteenth-century costume. The contest of the first day of the tournament had disposed of all the four-handed games but the final match, and the afternoon of the second day was left free for the single games. Granton had entered for the latter, and was looked upon as the probable victor. He won easily his first rubber, and came over to where Betty sat to wait his turn again.

“It is lucky for me, Mr. Snow,” he said to George, who in the happiness of full reconciliation sat by Dora’s side, “that you are not playing, or I shouldn’t have the ghost of a chance.”

“I’m resting on the laurels I won last year,” was the light response. “It’s far easier than to risk one’s reputation and defend it.”

“Are you so sure of winning, as it is, Mr. Granton?” asked Betty coolly.

“Sure? Of course not; but I have hopes now, which I shouldn’t indulge if Mr. Snow, with the glory of his victories at Newport last year, were counted in.”

“I wish you success,” she said, with a certain trace of satire in her tone. “Isn’t Mr. Howard playing remarkably well to-day? What a splendid volley? That gives him the game.”

“Sets: two, love,” called the scorer, and Mr. Howard’s victory was saluted with applause, which Mistress Betty took great satisfaction in leading.

“You seem to be greatly pleased at Howard’s good luck,” Granton observed, remembering that when his success had been clapped, just before, Miss Mork had refrained from lending a hand.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” she returned. “I’ve bet him a pair of gloves he wins.”

“What will you bet me I lose?” demanded he, not especially pleased at any sort of understanding between the young lady before him and Howard.

“Anything you like.”

“I should like nothing so much as—”

“As what?”

“No; upon reflection I don’t think I dare mention it,” Granton said coolly, looking at her with an expression in his big brown eyes which made her flush in spite of herself.

“Don’t be impudent,” she replied. “That is my province.”

“Time!” called the umpire, a little later. “Howard and Granton, concluding set.”

“Wish me luck,” Granton murmured, bending toward Betty as he rose.

“I’m sure I do, for my own sake,” she responded, with an ambiguity he afterward had reason to understand.

“What shall I do if Mr. Howard beats him?” Betty said to George and Dora, as the set began. “There’d be no fun playing him instead of Mr. Granton.”

“Oh, Howard hasn’t the ghost of a chance,” George responded reassuringly. “You are all right, Bet, if you don’t get nervous.”

But Betty did get nervous. The color came and went in her cheeks almost as swiftly as the flying balls were thrown, whose skilful service and returns soon proved Snow to be right in asserting that Howard had no chance against his antagonist.

“Oh, George,” she whispered, in an agony of apprehension, “can I do it? Won’t he beat me? It would be too horrible to challenge him and then fail!”

“Do it?” retorted her cousin; “of course you can do it! See that short serve. That’s what’s breaking Howard up: it’s easy for you to return if you’ll run up to it. His swift service doesn’t begin to be as good as yours.”

“Love set,” called the scorer; and as Betty looked at the supple, muscular figure of Nat Granton while the players exchanged courts, her fears almost overcame her resolve.

“My heart is thumping against my very boot-heels, Dolly,” she confided to her friend. “It’s no sort of use.”

“Are you going to give up?” demanded Dora curiously, and perhaps a little tauntingly.

“Give up!” cried Mistress Mork stoutly. “Do I ever give up? I’ll die first! But I do wish he wouldn’t get so many love games! It’s dreadfully discouraging.”

Granton was, in truth, having everything his own way. Howard, although a good player, had somehow lost his coolness, and was soon demoralized by a peculiar short, cutting service, of which his opponent had complete mastery, and which he was unable to return. His play became wild and uneven, and the contest was quickly decided against him.

The master of ceremonies came forward with the announcement that the prize racquet belonged to Mr. Nathaniel Granton, but that, according to the provisions of the tournament, any person had now a right to challenge the winner to play for the prize, by the best two games in three.

There was a rustle, and then a pause, as many eyes were turned toward George Snow, who had won in the Newport games the summer before. But that gentleman sat quiet in his place, a smile of amusement stealing over his comely features as Dora said, in the most tragic of whispers,—

“Oh, Betty, how can you?”

But Betty, her head thrown a trifle back, and the color flaming hotly into her face, rose with a charming mixture of dignity and shyness, and walked, before them all, straight up to the judges.

“I challenge the winner to a match,” she said, steadily enough, although she confided to Dora afterward that she felt as if every word had to be dragged out by main force. “I should like five minutes to change my dress.”

Granton uttered a low, sharp whistle, and doffed his cap.

“All right,” the master of ceremonies returned. “Be as quick as you can.”

“I’ll not keep you waiting long,” she assured him, and turned to beckon Dora to her.

As the two girls disappeared into the hotel, the bustle and chatter began again with renewed vigor, and swelled and buzzed in the liveliest fashion. Here was a genuine sensation for Maugus. Betty was too lovely and too great a favorite with the men wholly to escape the censure of the young ladies, who now had a string of pretty things to say of her boldness and presumption. But the gentlemen rallied to a man in her support, and, by the time she reappeared, public opinion, as represented by the spectators of the tournament, if not wholly in her favor, was so in outward expression.

She was dressed in a dark-blue jersey of silk, which fitted her in that perfect combination only possible with a faultless figure and an irreproachable jersey; and below that a skirt of navy-blue flannel fell in straight plaits to her ankles, where one caught, as she moved, occasional glimpses of a crimson stocking, the exact shade of her flat sash and of the close wing-tip in her trig little blue silk cap. There was nothing of the nature of tags and ends about her costume. Her hair was closely coiled, and even her ear-rings had been removed. The crimson handkerchief about her white throat was fastened into its place so securely as scarcely to be less smooth when the playing was over than when the first game began.

She was very sober,—so grave, indeed, that George went over to her just as she took her place, to say some absurd thing to make her laugh.

“Don’t be nervous,” he added, having succeeded in his object so far as to call a fleeting smile to her face. “And don’t look as if assisting at your own obsequies. You are all right, if you’ll only think so.”

“Will she do it?” Dora asked anxiously, as he took his seat again.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ve told her she will, and I hope so; but it isn’t going to be so easy.”

They talked of that tennis tournament for many a long day in Maugus. Opinion was divided at first as to the probable result. There was a quiet concentration in Betty’s manner which soon began to awake confidence in her ultimate success, although at first she lost. Even the most envious of the girls soon found themselves applauding every lucky hit she made; and Betty, whose senses were keenly alive that day, felt the stimulating consciousness that the general sympathy was with her. She threw her whole soul into her playing, every point she lost arousing her to new exertions.

“By Jove! Dora,” George said, “Granton’s bound to get a lesson. Betty’s blood is getting up. I’m convinced now that she’ll win, and I’ll bet you the gloves that she beats him a love set before she’s done.”

Dora was too excited to answer him. She hoped he might be right, but just now Betty was losing. She had been beaten three games out of five, and the present one, on Granton’s service, was going hard against her. Granton was harassing her with his short cut, which fell before her racquet reached it nearly every time.

“What’s got into her?” George muttered uneasily. “Ah, that was better. Good return.”

And he led the hand-clapping which greeted the difficult stroke by which Betty brought the score up to deuce. The game went against her, however, and soon after, the set.

“I’ll do it, George,” Betty said under her breath, as she passed him in changing courts. “Don’t be discouraged. The Mork blood is up.”

“It’s all on his cuts, Bet. Run up to them. Watch his service, and you can tell when they are coming. Nat could never serve a decent swift ball.”

Betty nodded and went on to her place.

“Play!” called Granton.

Watching him, his opponent noticed him throw his head back, and remembered his telling her that he always betrayed his cutting. She ran toward the net as the ball came down, and returned it like a cannonball.

“She’s got it!” cried Snow, with great glee, in his excitement calling so loudly that both the players heard him. “She’s all right now. Oh, that’s beautiful!”

Granton tried a couple of swift balls and faulted them both.

“Love; thirty,” called the scorer.

Another cut; again cleverly intercepted; then a fault and an easy, round-hand service.

“Love; game.”

The applause was really quite tremendous.

“They are all against me,” Granton observed to Betty, handing her the balls over the net and laughing rather ruefully. “Public opinion would be positively outraged if you should fail.”

“I’ve no intention of failing, thank you,” she returned, with spirit; and away she swept to her position. “Play!”

Granton was himself on his mettle, yet he did not play his best. He could not fully recover from his surprise at the style of his adversary’s play. The swiftness of her service and returns was so different from what was expected of a girl that he was scarcely on his guard against it up to the very end. He felt the sympathy of the spectators, too, to be against him, and this was not without its influence. He lost the set, and with it, by an unfortunate chance, his good nature.

“Sets, one all,” the scorer announced; and something in the saucy toss of Betty’s lovely head, as, flushed and panting, she stood talking with George and Dora, jarred upon her lover’s nerves with sudden irritation. An unreasonable madness took possession of him. How much was wounded vanity, it might not be easy to say; but under the circumstances, with all his mates grinning at his failure, it was not at all strange that his feelings were not wholly placid. His play in the third and decisive set became rash and excited. He lost his head a little, and before he fairly knew how it happened the score was called on Betty’s service:—

“Games; five, love”

“Good!” was George Snow’s comment. “I told you she’d beat a love set before she was done.—Oh, keep your head, Bet!”

Betty delivered a ball swift as a bullet and just clearing the net.

“Fifteen; love.”

A fault, and then another swift ball, which skimmed like a swallow over the net and struck the ground only to cling to it in a swift roll.

“Thirty; love.”

The next ball was beaten back and forth until Granton dashed it to the ground at Betty’s very feet.

“Thirty; fifteen.”

The excitement was at its height. Even those who did not appreciate the finer points of the play caught the interest and somehow understood pretty accurately how matters stood, and were as earnest as the rest. Small-talk was forgotten, heads were craned forward, and all eyes were fixed upon the players. Betty grasped her racquet by the extreme end of its handle, and held the ball as high above her head as she could reach.

“Play!”

She struck it with all her force.

“Forty; fifteen,” was the scorer’s call; and Nat Granton understood that only one stroke lay between him and defeat by a love set.

George Snow deliberately turned away his face.

“I never supposed I could be such a consummate fool,” he said afterward, “but I positively could not look at your last service, Bet. I felt as if the whole universe were at stake.”

As for the player, she was fairly pale with excitement; but her head was clear and her hand steady. She paused an instant, poising her racquet. She observed that Granton stood near the middle of his court. With a quick step she moved to the very outer corner of her own and sent a swift ball sharply under her opponent’s left hand.

“Game; love set,” called the scorer. “Sets two to one in favor of Miss Mork.”

And, amid what for Maugus was a really astonishing round of applause, Betty, flushed but triumphant, walked to the net to shake hands with her vanquished lover.

V.

It was astonishing how humble and forgiving her victory made Mistress Betty. She was troubled with the fear that she had been unmaidenly, that she had hurt Granton’s feelings and alienated his friendship forever, with a dozen more scruples quite as absurd and irrational.

She escaped as quickly as possible from her friends and their congratulations, and hurried to her room on the pretext of dressing for supper. There she cooled her hot cheeks, burning with exercise and excitement, and looking ruefully at her image in the mirror, shook her head reproachfully at the counterfeit presentment as at one who had beguiled her into misdoing.

After supper she was sitting rather gloomily in a retired corner of the piazza, when the defeated Granton approached. The reaction from the afternoon’s excitement had rendered the young lady’s spirit rather subdued, but she rallied at sight of the new-comer.

“Good-evening,” he said. “Were you enjoying the sweets of victory?”

“I was enjoying the sweets of solitude,” she returned, a little pointedly.

Granton laughed.

“I suppose,” he remarked, taking a vacant chair near her, “that I need not apologize for my ill-judged remarks some time since about girls and tennis. My afternoon’s punishment ought to pass as a sufficient expiation.”

“Expiation is always a matter of feeling.”

“Oh, as to that, I felt I had enough, I assure you,” he laughed. “It may not be gallant to say so, but it was really horrible to be beaten out of my boots by a lady in broad daylight, in face of all Maugus assembled.”

Betty was silent. The remorseful feeling rose again in her breast. Granton spoke lightly enough, but she wondered if she had not humiliated him terribly. She played nervously with her fan, hardly knowing how to phrase it, yet longing to offer something in the way of apology.

“I hope,” she began, “I hope—”

Nat regarded her closely in the fading light as she hesitated, and by some happy inspiration divined her softened mood. He noted the downcast eyes and troubled face. Without fully comprehending her mental state, he yet found courage to move a trifle nearer.

“Yes?” he queried, laying his fingers upon the arm of her chair.

Betty looked at the hand which had approached so near, and a sudden trepidation thrilled her. She opened and closed her fan nervously, but made no attempt to finish her broken sentence.

“Betty,” her lover said, leaning forward, “now I am in the dust at your feet, you must at least let me speak. You’ve kept out of my way so for the last two or three weeks that I was afraid you disliked me; but now I understand where you have been. You know how much I care for you.”

Still she did not raise her eyes.

“Don’t you care for me?” he pleaded. “I’ve been in love with you all summer. You must have known it.”

He paused again, yet she did not answer, though a great tide of joy thrilled her whole being. Her lover seized both her hands and bent down until his cheek almost touched hers.

“Will you marry me, Betty?”

All her wilfulness and sauciness flashed in her eyes as she lifted her glance at last to his and answered.

“I wouldn’t if I hadn’t beaten this afternoon.”

With which implied consent he seemed perfectly satisfied.