Various

By Grace S. Richmond

It’s all right, Joe,” said Miss Farnsworth, rapidly drawing on a pair of heavy white gloves. “You needn’t be in the least afraid to trust me with the colts. And the station agent can find somebody to help him load the wagon for me.”

She sprang in and took her seat at the front of the big farm wagon—a most unusual and dainty figure there, in her crisp white linen. She gathered the reins deftly, said gayly to the people on the farmhouse porch: “When I come back I’ll show you unpatriotic persons how to keep Fourth of July in the country,” and would have driven off with a flourish but for one unforeseen and effective hindrance. Joe remained stolidly at the heads of the two restless black colts.

“You may give them their heads now, Joe,” said the girl, decisively.

“In jest a minute, miss.”

“Now. I’m in a hurry.”

But Joe remained stationary. He turned his head and eyed uneasily a window above the porch, murmuring: “Jest a minute, now——”

Miss Farnsworth waited half the designated period, then she said, imperatively: “Joe, be so kind as to let go of those horses.”

Joe pretended to have found something wrong with the bridle of the off horse. Miss Farnsworth watched him skeptically. And an instant later Stuart Jarvis appeared upon the porch, hat in hand, smiling at the driver of the farm wagon.

“May I go with you?” he asked, easily, coming up.

There was no reason why she should refuse, particularly with three middle-aged women, two elderly gentlemen, and four girls observing with interest from the porch. Neither was there good reason for refusing to allow Mr. Jarvis to take the reins, since he leaped up at the right side of the wagon, and held out his hand for them as a matter of course. But the moment they were around the first bend in the road Agnes Farnsworth attempted to adjust affairs to her original intentions.

“Would you mind letting me drive?” she asked. The words, though spoken with a silver tongue, had rather the effect of a notification than of an interrogation.

“Not in the least,” returned Jarvis, making no motion, however, to resign the reins, “provided you can prove that I am authorized to give up my charge.”

She looked at him as if she doubted whether she had heard aright. “You know perfectly well that I am accustomed to horses,” she declared, moving as if she intended to change places with him.

He looked full down at her, smiling, but he still drove with the air of one who intends to continue in his present occupation. The black colts were going at a spanking trot, making nothing of the decided upward trend of the road. Their shining coats gleamed in the sun; alertness and power showed in every line of them. They were alive from the tips of their forward-pointing satin ears to the ends of their handsome uncropped tails, and they felt their life quiveringly.

“There is no reason in the world why I shouldn’t drive,” said Miss Farnsworth, with the pleasantly determined air of a girl who intends ultimately to have her own way. “If you had not appeared just at the moment you did, I should have come alone.”

“Do you really think you would?” asked Jarvis, studying the left ear of the nigh horse.

“Certainly. Why not?”

“Because I told Joe not to let you go without me.”

She colored under her summer’s tan.

“May I ask,” she inquired, somewhat stiffly, “why you didn’t suggest to me an hour ago that you wished to get to the station?”

Jarvis smiled at this way of putting it. “Joe was intending to go with you,” he explained.

She looked puzzled.

“Five minutes before you left, Joe came and told me that an accident had happened to one of his men, and that he couldn’t go. He said he didn’t think the colts were safe for you. I’ve been here only three days—I don’t know anything about them. Joe does.”

“Oh—nonsense!” said the girl. “I’m not afraid of them.”

“They ran away day before yesterday.”

“That makes no difference.”

“They are crazily afraid of everything in the shape of a conveyance run by its own motive power, from a threshing machine to an automobile.”

“That makes no difference, either,” declared the young person beside him with energy. “Not the least in the world.”

“Possibly not—to you. It makes an immense difference to me.”

She looked away, although the words were said in a matter-of-fact tone hardly calculated to convey their full importance.

“Since you are here to take the reins away from me when I scream,” she said, with a curling lip, “it is perfect nonsense to refuse to let me drive. Mr. Jarvis——”

“Put it politely,” he warned her, smiling.

“Please change places with me.” She said it imperiously.

He looked steadfastly down into her eyes for an instant, until her glance fell. Then he asked, lightly:

“Have you driven them before?”

“No.”

“I wonder why,” he mused.

She was silent, but her cheeks burned with displeasure.

“I’m glad we’re to have a Fourth of July celebration,” said he, driving steadily on. His tone became casual, with a pleasant inflection, quite as if there had been no controversy. “It will do the natives good—stir them up. I took the liberty, after you had sent your order, of wiring the dealer to add rather a good lot of explosives on my own account. They will come along with yours. It’s lucky the wagon is big—we shall need it for all the stuff.”

But the girl would not talk about the Fourth of July. She sat erect, with her very charming head in the air, and let the miles roll by in silence.

Upon the platform of the small freight house at the junction stood several boxes, a long roll and two trunks—all due at the farmhouse. As the wagon drew up to it, the freight agent came leisurely out to attend to business. His eyes fell at once upon the black team.

“Pretty likely pair,” said he, with an approving pat upon the nearest shining flank. “Joe Hempstead’s, ain’t they? I heard he set considerable store by ’em. Well, they’re all right—or will be, when they’re a little older. I’ve got a mare now that I cal’late could show ’em a clean pair o’ heels. She’s round behind the station. I’ll bring her out.”

“Of course—that’s what we came to see,” observed Jarvis, as the man disappeared. “Getting our load is a secondary matter.”

“Other matters are always secondary to the sight of a good horse,” retorted his companion. She was leaning forward and Jarvis did not miss the opportunity to look at her. He gazed intently at a certain conjunction of curves at the back of her neck—a spot which always tempted him tremendously whenever he saw it.

The freight agent appeared round the corner of the station, leading an animal the sight of which made Jarvis’ eyes light with pleasure. Agnes Farnsworth caught her breath softly and leaned still further forward.

The brown mare was led back and forth before them, the colts requiring a strong hand upon the reins as she caracoled in front of their exasperated eyes. Jarvis was obliged to give them his whole attention. But the girl slipped down from the wagon. She went up to the mare and laid a coaxing, caressing hand upon the velvet nose—a hand so gentle that the animal did not resent it. She spoke softly to her; inquired her name, and called her by it in a voice of music—Betty. Presently she asked for the halter, and the freight agent, somewhat doubtful, but too full of admiration for the near presence of beauty to refuse, gave it to her. Then, indeed, did Miss Farnsworth prove the truth of her assertion that she was accustomed to horses. In five minutes she had made love to the mare so effectively that the shy and hitherto somewhat disdainful creature was following her with a slack halter and an entreating nose. Incidentally Betty had allowed the slender fingers to open her mouth.

“Of course you are not selling her,” remarked Miss Farnsworth, carelessly, as she walked away to examine her freight.

“Well—had an offer of two hundred and fifty for her last week.”

She looked around with an astonished face. “And wouldn’t take it?”

“Why—no. She’s wu’th three hundred if she’s wu’th a cent.”

“You won’t get three hundred for her,” said the girl.

“She’s as sound as a nut,” declared the freight agent, with indignation. Miss Farnsworth laughed.

“She’s a pretty creature,” said she, “but I have eyes. How did she hurt her left hind ankle?”

The freight agent stared. “Her left hind ankle! Why—there ain’t a sign of a limp in it. And her knee action’s perfect.”

“She was lame two weeks ago,” said the girl, and looked at him. Jarvis had brought his colts to a temporary stand-still, and was observing the little scene with amusement.

“Why—she got a stone in that left hind foot,” admitted the freight agent, walking the mare toward the corner of the building. “Any horse’ll do that. She ain’t lame now—wa’n’t then to amount to anything. But I’d like to know how you guessed it.”

She was still laughing. “I suppose you would let her go for two hundred and twenty-five, now, wouldn’t you?”

The freight agent led his mare away without deigning to reply, except by a shake of the head. He came back and loaded the freight into the wagon, leaving the trunks till the last. As he was shouldering the first of these, Agnes stopped him.

“Will you take two hundred and fifty for Betty?” she asked, with perfect coolness, except for a certain gleam in her eyes.

“You ain’t buyin’ horses yourself?”

“I asked you a question.”

“She ain’t no lady’s horse.”

“I asked you if you would sell her for two hundred and fifty dollars,” repeated the girl, and prepared to step up into the wagon. Jarvis was not getting down to assist her. The black pair were too restless for that.

“Why—I’d ought to have three hundred for her,” the man hesitated.

Miss Farnsworth set her foot upon the step and drew herself up beside Jarvis. She did not look toward the freight agent. Just as the horses began to swing about, the man upon the platform said, haltingly:

“Well—if you mean it, and can pay me cash——”

She looked at him once more, quite indifferently. “I s’pose you can have her. But she’s wu’th more.”

“Mr. Jarvis,” said the horse buyer, “can we lead her home?”

He shook his head. “Not behind the colts.”

She gave him one glance of scorn—the last of any sort he received from her for some time to come. “Have you a saddle?” she asked of the agent.

“Yes, ma’am. Not a very good one, but such as ’tis.”“Will you ride her home for me?” she asked, over a cool shoulder, of the man beside her.

“Not while you drive the colts,” he answered, with a keen glance at her, in which she might have read several things if she had taken the trouble.

“Have you a side-saddle?” she demanded of the freight agent.

“Well—if you’ll wait five minutes—I ’low I can get one.”

As the man disappeared, Miss Farnsworth jumped down from the wagon once more. She produced a letter, and, from the letter a key. With this she opened one of the trunks, which yet stood upon the platform, lifted a tray, dived among sundry garments, and drew out with an air of triumph something made of dark green cloth and folded carefully. With this she walked away into the empty, country freight house.

When, after two minutes’ absence, she emerged again, she was holding up the skirt of a riding habit and carrying a bundle of something which she took to the trunk and hastily stowed away. She said nothing whatever to Jarvis, but stood awaiting the return of the freight agent with an averted cheek.

When the mare reappeared upon the scene she wore an old side-saddle of ancient pattern, and was clumsily bridled with headgear too large for her. Jarvis gave her one glance, and spoke with decision.

“If you will hold these horses a minute, I’ll look that affair over,” he said.

The other man grinned. “All the same to me,” he returned, amicably. “Like enough you’re more used to this sort of business than I be.”

Jarvis went at the big bridle, rearranging straps, getting out his knife and cutting an extra hole or two, tightening it and bringing it more nearly to fit the sleek, small head of the mare. Miss Farnsworth looked on silently. If she appreciated this care for her safety, she did not make it apparent. Only, as Jarvis finished a very careful examination and testing of the side-saddle and stood erect with a smile at her, she said: “Thank you”—quite as if she had no mind to say it. With which he was obliged to be content.

He silently put her upon the mare, held the animal quiet while he looked for the space of one slow breath gravely up into the girl’s face, meeting only lowered lashes and a scornful mouth, and let go the bits. An instant later brown Betty and her rider were twenty rods down the road.

The two men watched her round the turn. Then Jarvis sprang to his place.

“Load the rest of the stuff in—quick,” he said, and the other obeyed.

“Gee!” remarked the station agent to himself, watching the cloud of dust in which the wagon was disappearing. “Looks like he’d got left. He can’t catch the mare—not with that load. Say, but her and Betty made a picture—that’s right.”

The road from Crofton Junction to the Hempstead Farms lay, for the most part, down hill. The black pair appreciated this fact. They had been trained in double harness from the beginning, and their ideas of life and its purposes were identical. They now joined forces to take the freight home in the shortest and most impracticable space of time.

Jarvis kept them well in hand. If he had had them in front of a light vehicle of some sort, unencumbered with a miscellaneous and unstowable lot of freight, he would have enjoyed letting them have their will. As it was, he was obliged to consider several conflicting elements in the situation and restrain the colts accordingly. His pace, therefore, was not sufficiently fast to allow him to gain upon the fleet-footed mare and her rider, and the winding road gave him no hint of their whereabouts. He did not belong to the household of boarders at the Hempstead Farms; his presence there just now was a matter of business with one of the elderly gentlemen who were taking their vacation upon the farmhouse porch—that and a certain willingness to attend carefully and unhurriedly to business which had brought him within sight of a certain girl.

It was a bit dull driving back alone. He was not familiar with the road; it was not the one by which he had come. Miss Farnsworth had not planned this outcome of the trip from the beginning—he gave her credit for that; neither could he expect a girl who had fallen in love with, and purchased, a saddle horse within the short space of fifteen minutes, to wait for it to be sent leisurely home. But it occurred to him that she might have been willing to let the mare trot lightly along the road just ahead of the blacks, where Betty’s nearness might least disconcert Tim and Tom, and where she might now and then exchange a word with their driver over her shoulder—even that cool shoulder of hers.

All at once he caught sight of the brown mare. As he approached a fork in the road, Miss Farnsworth and Betty came galloping up the east split of the fork—the one which did not lead toward Hempstead Farms. He laughed to himself, for he perceived at once that she had taken the wrong road and was spurring to get back to the fork before he should have passed.

But in this she did not succeed. Jarvis reached the corner before her. He drew up a little to let her in ahead of him, for the road was narrow. But as she neared him she motioned him ahead, and to humor her when he could he went on, though he doubted the wisdom of letting the blacks hear Betty’s sharp-ringing little hoofs at their heels.

“How do you like her?” he called, as he passed, managing a shift of the reins and an uplifted hat. He smiled at her quite as if he had nothing in the world against her, though he was feeling at the moment that the brute creation are not the only things which need a certain amount of taming.

“Oh, she’s a dear,” answered Miss Farnsworth, in a voice as sweet as a flute. “Isn’t she the prettiest thing? She’s a perfect saddle-horse—except for the tricks I haven’t found out yet.”

She was smiling back at him, all traces of petulance smoothed quite out of her face. Her cheeks were brilliantly pink, her hair blown by the breeze. She carried her wide-brimmed straw hat on the pommel of her saddle; evidently it had not proved satisfactory as a riding hat. Altogether, in the brief chance he had for observation, Jarvis was of the notion that there might be two opinions as to what creature was the prettiest thing on the Crofton road that day.

There was not much talk possible. There could be no question that Tim and Tom heard Betty coming on behind them, and were exercised thereby. The mare’s stride was shorter than that of the colts; her hoofbeats reached them in quicker rhythm than their own. As a small clock ticking beside a big one seems to say to the latter, “Hurry up—hurry up”—-so Betty’s rapid trot behind stirred up the young pair in front to greater valor.

If Betty’s rider, being avowedly an expert horsewoman, recognized this, it did not appear in any pains she took to avoid it. Betty danced behind faster and faster; and faster and faster did the blacks strain to draw away from her.

There came at length a moment when Jarvis could not have boasted that he still had them in hand. About the most that he could do was to keep them in the road and on their feet. Two minutes before Miss Agnes Farnsworth appeared at the fork of the road the driver of the blacks could at any moment have pulled them with a powerful hand back upon their haunches and brought them to a quick-breathing standstill. Two minutes afterward neither he nor any other man could have done it.

And yet Jarvis did not make so much as a turn of the head to suggest to Betty’s rider that she call off the race. This, of course, was what he should have done; it was obviously the only common-sense thing to do. Plainly, since he would not do it, there was still one more mettlesome spirit upon the Crofton road to be reckoned with that morning.

II.

Under such circumstances it was nearly inevitable that something should happen. It had seemed to Jarvis, as he was rushed along, that the only thing probable, since Miss Farnsworth had proved her ability to ride the mare, was that he himself should meet disaster in some form. The black team were, to all intents and purposes, and until the cause of their high-headedness should be removed, running away. They were nearing a place which he could see was likely to prove the rockiest and most winding of any part of this rocky and winding New England road.

But, as usual, it was not the foreseen which happened, but the unforeseen. A particularly vigorous lurch of the wagon displaced one of the two trunks from its position, and the next roll and pitch sent it off. The brown mare swerved, but she was so near the back of the wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk, itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in the saddle went with her.

Jarvis had recognized the fall of the trunk, and in the one quick glance back he was able to give he saw the mare go down. His team, startled afresh by the crash, leaped ahead. Although he had been using every muscle more and more strenuously for the last fifteen minutes, new power rushed into his arms. He used every means in his power to quiet the pair, and, after a little, it began to tell. The ceasing of the mare’s hoofbeats upon the road behind withdrew from the situation what had been its most dangerous element, and at length, coming to a sudden sharp rise in the road, Jarvis succeeded in pulling the colts down to a walk. The instant it became possible he turned them about.

“Now,” he said, aloud, to them—and his voice was harsh with anxiety—“spoil you or not, you may go back at the top of your speed,” and he sent them, wild-eyed and breathing hard, straight back over their tracks. And as he neared the place where the mare had fallen, he held his breath and his heart grew sick within him.

It was an unfrequented road, and no one had come over it since himself. As he turned the bend he saw just what he had expected to see, and a great sob shook him. Then he gathered himself, with a mighty grip upon his whole being, for what there might be left to do for her.

The brown mare lay in a pitiful heap, her fore legs doubled under her. Beneath her, kept from being thrown over Betty’s head by her foot in the stirrup, and caught under the roll of the mare’s body, lay the slender figure of her rider.

“Oh—God!” groaned the man, as he threw himself upon the ground beside her. But as he fearfully turned her head toward him, that he might see first the worst there was, two dark-lashed, gray eyes slowly unclosed and looked up into his, and a smile, so faint that it was but the hint of a smile, trembled about her mouth.

In the swiftness of his relief Jarvis had to lay stern hands upon his own impulses. He smiled back at her with lips not quite steady. Then he set about releasing her.

When he had her out upon the grass she lay very white and still again. “Can you tell me where you are hurt?” he begged. Then, as she did not answer, he dashed off to a brook which gurgled in a hollow a rod away, and, coming back with a soaked handkerchief, gently bathed her face and hair. After a little her eyes unclosed again.

“I—don’t think I’m—badly hurt. My shoulder and—my—knee——”

“I’ll get you home as soon as you feel able.”

She turned her head slowly toward the road. Divining her thought, Jarvis quietly placed himself between her eyes and the body of the brown mare. She understood.

“Is she dreadfully hurt?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Alive?”

He nodded. The girl lay still an instant, then she threw one arm across her eyes, and Jarvis saw that she was softly sobbing. He watched her for a little, then he took her other hand in his, holding it close and tenderly, as one would soothe an unhappy child.

“When I have taken you home,” he said, very gently, “I will come back to Betty.”

She drew her hand away quickly. “Take me home now,” she whispered.

So Jarvis, as best he could, took her home. It was a hard journey, which he would have made easier for her if he could have got her to lean against him. But she sat erect, holding herself with a white face and compressed lips, and Jarvis, thinking things he dared not put into words, drove with as little jolt and jar as might be back to the Hempstead Farms.

Joe, coming across the barnyard, saw them, looked at them a second time, and strode hurriedly forward. Jarvis would have given the horses into his charge and looked after the girl himself, but she forestalled him, and it was Joe, the man of overalls and wide straw hat, who helped her to her room, the porch being for the moment mercifully bereft of boarders. It was the sunny hour of the morning there.

But presently she sent for him. He went at once, for he was preparing, with Joe, to go to the injured horse. Mrs. Hempstead took him to Miss Farnsworth’s room, and stayed stiffly by while he crossed to the bed where the girl lay, still in her riding habit. As he came to her she held out her hand.

“Please forgive me,” she said, with her head turned away. “I might have killed—you.”

“No—you couldn’t. I’ve something to live for, so I’m invulnerable—till I get it.”

“Will you do something for me?” she asked. As she lay, with her head turned from him, the warm white curves at the back of her neck appealed to him more irresistibly than ever.

“Anything!”

She thrust one hand down under the folds of her skirt, drew out something heavy and shining which had lain there, and put it into his hand. Then she buried her face in the pillow. “Please——” she began—and could not finish.

Jarvis looked around at his landlady, standing by like the embodiment of propriety. He turned again to the girlish figure shaking with its passionate regret. Then he took the little revolver from her, bent and whispered, “I understand,” and went quickly and silently away.

When Jarvis returned to Joe Hempstead, getting ready the flat drag known in country parlance as a “stone boat,” his first words were eager.

“Joe, I don’t know that there’s the slightest hope of saving the mare, but I’d like to bring her home and try. It was out of the question to look her over much there. She went down on her knees—smash—and one leg was certainly broken below the knee. But I’ve a hope the leg I couldn’t get at may only be bruised.”

Joe nodded. “We’ll do the best we can by her—for the little girl’s sake,” he declared. “She’s a high-spirited young critter—the human one, I mean—but I guess she’s a-takin’ this pretty hard, and I’d like to help her out.”

So presently brown Betty, lifting dumb eyes full of pain at the sound of a caressing voice, found herself in the hands of her friends.

“Well—it’s a question, Joe,” said Jarvis, slowly, ten minutes later. He was sitting with a hand on the mare’s flank, after a thorough and skillful examination. Betty’s head lay in Joe’s lap, held firmly by hands which were both strong and tender. “It’s a question whether it wouldn’t be the kindest thing to end her troubles for her. I expect she’d tell us to, if she could talk. She’ll have to be put in a sling, of course, and kept there for weeks.”

“That there sprained leg——” Joe began, doubtfully.

“Yes—it’ll be about as tough a proposition as the broken one. But——”

The two men looked at each other.

“If you say so——” agreed Joe.

“Let’s try it,” urged Jarvis. “It’s a question of human suffering, or brute—and there’s a possibility of success. I shall be here a day or two longer—over the Fourth. I’ll play nurse as long as I stay—I’d like nothing better. I was born and brought up with horses—in Kentucky.”

“What I ain’t picked up about ’em I knew when I was born,” said Joe, with a laugh and a pat of the mare’s head. “All right—we’ll turn ourselves into a couple of amachure vet’rinaries—seein’ they ain’t none hereabouts.”

Between them they had soon bestowed the mare upon the stone boat in the best possible position for enduring the ride.

“Seems as if she understands the whole thing,” Joe said, at length, looking down into the animal’s face as her head lay quietly upon the blanket. “You’re a lady,” he said, softly, to Betty. The mare’s beautiful liquid eyes looked dumbly back at him, and he stooped and rubbed her nose. “Yes, you’re a lady,” he repeated, “and we’ll do our level best to deserve your trustin’ us—poor little wreck.”

In a roomy stall they put Betty. It was an afternoon’s work to arrange it for the scientific treatment of the broken leg. Joe, with the readiness of a surgeon—he was, indeed, an amateur veterinary, and was consulted as such by the whole countryside—set the leg and put it in plaster of Paris. The two men rigged a sling which should keep the weight of the mare off the injured legs and support her body. With the help of two farm hands, Betty was put into this gear in a way which made it impossible for her to move enough to hurt the broken leg. A rest was provided for her head, and her equine comfort was in every way considered. When all was done, the farmer and the electrical engineer looked at each other with exceeding satisfaction.

“She’ll get well,” said Jarvis, with conviction. “I never saw it better done than you have managed it.”

“Me?” returned Joe, with a laugh. “Well, say—I wouldn’t mind havin’ you for chief assistant when I go into the business perfessionally.”

Jarvis spent the rest of the day, more or less, in the box stall. The evening was occupied in assisting Betty to receive the entire houseful of boarders, whom the news of the accident had reached at about supper time.

At midnight, having tried without success for an hour to sleep, he got up, dressed and went out through the warm July starlight to tell the brown mare he was sorry for her. He found a man’s figure standing beside that of the animal.

“Well!” Joe greeted him. “You’re another. I can’t seem to sleep, thinkin’ about this poor critter, slung up here—sufferin’—and not understandin’. They like company—now I’m sure of it. It’s a good thing she can’t know how many days and nights she’s got to be strung here, ain’t it?”

His hand was gently stroking the mare’s shoulder, as if he thought it must ache. He looked around at Jarvis, standing in the rays of light from a lantern hanging on a peg near by.

“Go back to bed, Joe,” advised Jarvis. “You’ve plenty to do to-morrow. I’ll stay with the patient a while. I shall like to do it—I’m as bad as you, I can’t sleep for thinking of her.”

“Course you can’t,” thought Joe, going back to the house. “But you didn’t say which ‘her’ ’twas that keeps you awake. I guess it’s one’s much as ’tis t’other.”

It was about two o’clock in the morning that Jarvis, in a corner of the box stall, where the mare could see him, lying at full length upon a pile of hay, his hands clasped under his head, heard light and uneven footsteps slowly approaching across the barn floor. He was instantly alert in every sense, but he did not move.

“Betty dear,” said a soft voice. Then a slender figure came into view in the dim light, walking with a limp and painfully. A loose blue robe trailed about her, and two long brown braids, curling at the ends, hung over her shoulders. She came slowly into the stall and stood and looked at Betty. Suddenly she put both arms around the mare’s neck, laid her cheek against the animal’s face, and spoke to her.

“Poor Betty,” she said, pitifully. “Did you fall into the hands of a cruel girl, who hurt you for all the rest of your life? Can you forgive her, Betty? She didn’t mean to do it, dear. She was out of temper herself, because she couldn’t have her own way—when she didn’t want her own way—Betty—can you understand? You were doing the best you could—she made you act such a silly part. Dear little Betty—she would stand beside you all night long, just to punish herself, if she could—but——”

She leaned against the side of the stall, and sank slowly down to the ground, with a hand pressed to her knee. Jarvis, on the hay, stirred involuntarily, and with a little cry of alarm the girl struggled to her feet again. At the next instant, as Jarvis spoke gently and his face came into view in the lantern light, she leaned once more, breathing quickly, against the side of the stall. Her face as she stared at him was like that of a startled child.

“You mustn’t stand, you’re not fit,” he said, anxiously. “You ought not to have come. Let me help you back.”

She gazed at him beseechingly. “Please let me stay a few minutes,” she said. Was this meek creature the willful young person of the morning? “I can’t sleep for thinking of her, and I want to make her understand that I’m sorry.”

“I think she does. If she doesn’t, she at least appreciates the tone of your voice. Even a horse might have sense enough for that. Let me bring you something for a seat, if you will stay.”

He found an empty box, covered it with a new blanket, and set it by the side of the stall. She sat down and studied the arrangement of the appliances for the keeping of the mare in the quiet necessary to the healing of the broken leg. Jarvis explained it all to her, and she listened eagerly and attentively. But when he had finished she asked him abruptly:

“Did you hear what I said to Betty?”

“I could hardly help it.”

“Then you heard me say that about being out of temper at not having my own way this morning—when I—really didn’t want my own way.” Her eyes were on Betty’s patient little head.

“Do you expect me to believe that?” he asked, smiling.

“Did I seem to want it?”

“Very decidedly.”

“Yet—if you had let me have it—do you know how I should have felt toward you?”

“I know how I should have felt toward myself.”

“How would you?” she asked, curiously.

He shook his head. “I believe I’d better not try to explain that.”

“Why not?”

“Dangerous ground.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you admit,” he said, “that when you seem to want your own way, you really don’t want it——”

“That was just in this instance,” she interrupted, quickly.

“Such a thing never happened before?”

“Certainly not.”

“How about the time you lost your slipper off under the table the night we were dining at the Dennisons’ and you forbade me to get it? Then when you thought I hadn’t——”

“Oh—that was a silly thing—don’t mention it. This was different. You knew the horses weren’t safe for me to drive——”

“You admit that?”

“For the sake of the argument, yes. But since you thought they weren’t safe, it would have been a weak thing for you to have given in to me.”

“Thank you—that’s precisely the way I felt.”

“But it doesn’t prevent—it wouldn’t prevent my wanting my own way—always—about everything——”

“When?”

She turned a brilliant color under the lantern rays.

He bent forward. “Are you warning me?”

“I’m trying to let you know the sort of person I am.”

“Well,” he said, leaning back again, and studying her with attention, noting the picture she unconsciously made in her blue robe, with the brown braids hanging over her shoulders, “I’ve been observing you with somewhat close scrutiny for about three years now, and it occurs to me that I’m fairly conversant with your moods and tenses. Perhaps I ought to be warned, but—I’m not.”

“I’ve always been told that sort of thing grows upon one,” she observed.

“What sort of thing? Having one’s own way?”

She nodded.

“You’re right there,” he agreed. “I’ve been wanting mine, more or less strenuously, for three years.”

“Elaine Dennison,” she observed—somewhat irrelevantly, it might seem—“is the dearest, most amiable girl. She loves to make people happy.”

“Yes—and doesn’t succeed. And you—don’t want to make them happy—and—could.”

She shook her head. “No—I never could. Anybody who had much to do with me would have to learn at once that I must have my own way.”

“And if he should chance to be the sort of person who always wants his own way, it would be disastrous. Yes—I see. And I comprehend your ideal. I saw such a man once. It was in a railway station. He stood at one side holding all the luggage, and his wife bought the tickets. She was larger than he—I should say about one hundred and fifty pounds larger. To take and hold such an enviable position as this woman held needs, I think, an excess of avoirdupois.”

He was laughing down at her, for she had got to her feet, and he had risen with her. One hundred and twenty pounds of girlish grace and slenderness looked even less beside one hundred and eighty of well-distributed masculine bulk. But it was only his lips which laughed. His eyes dwelt on her with no raillery in their depths, only a longing which grew with each jesting word he spoke.

“Will you let me carry you in?” he asked, as she moved slowly toward Betty. She shook her head. She laid a caressing hand on the mare’s smooth nose and whispered in her ear.

“Good-night, Betty,” she said.

“You ought not to walk, with that knee. You can’t fool with a knee—it’s a bad place to get hurt. I’m going to carry you.”

She stood still, looking up at him at last. “Good-night, Mr. Jarvis,” she said.

He came close. “See here,” he said, rapidly, under his breath, “I can’t stand this any longer. You’ve put me off and put me off—and I’ve let you. You’ve had your way. Now I’m going to have mine. You shall answer me, one way or the other, to-night—now. I love you—I’ve told you so—twice with my lips—a hundred times in every other way. But I’m not going to be played with any longer. Will you take me—now—or never?”

“What a singular way—what a barbaric way,” she said, with proud eyes.

“It may be singular—it may be primitive—it’s my way—to end what I must. Will you answer me?”

“Yes, I’ll answer you,” she said, with uplifted head.

“Look at me, then.”

She raised her eyes to his. Given the chance he so seldom got from her, he gazed eagerly down into their depths, revealed to him in the half light, half shadow, of the strange place they were in. She met the look steadily at first, then falteringly. At length the lashes fell.

In silence he waited, motionless. She tried to laugh lightly. “You’re so tragic,” she murmured.

There was no answer.

“We should never be happy together,” she began, slowly. “You’ve a will like iron—I’ve felt it for three years. Mine is—I don’t know what mine is—but it’s not used to being denied. We should quarrel over everything, even when I knew, as I did to-day, that you were right. I—don’t know how to tell you—but—I——”

She hesitated. He made no answer, no plea, simply stood, breathing deep but steadily, and steadily watching her.

“You’re such a good friend,” she went on, reluctantly, after a little. She was drooping against the door of the box stall like a flower which needs support, but he did not offer to help her. “Such a good friend I don’t want to lose you—but I know by the way you speak that I’m going to lose you if—I——”

She raised her eyes little by little till they had reached his shoulders, broad and firm and motionless.

“Good-by, Mr. Jarvis,” she said, very low, and in a voice which trembled a little. “But please don’t mind very much. I’m not—worth it. I——”

She lifted her eyes once more from his shoulder to his face, to find the same look, intensified, meeting her with its steady fire. She paled slowly, dropped her eyes and turned as if to go, when a great breath, like a sob, shook her. She stood for an instant, faltering, then turned again and took one uncertain step toward him.

“Oh—I can’t—I can’t——” she breathed. “You’re the stronger—and I—I—want you to be!”

With one quick stride he reached her. “Of course you do,” he said, his voice exultant in its joy.

Behind them brown Betty watched with dumb eyes, wondering, perhaps, how so stormy a scene could be succeeded by such motionless calm. As for her, this new, strange way of standing, always standing, too full of pain to sleep, was a thing to be endured as best she might.