yes, I do; I like to fish." With a smile she said good-by, and went
away.

After this Maurice settled down into deeper despondency than before. He
had refused an invitation to drive, hid treated with bitter scorn
Katherine's suggestion that he might like to go out to the creek with her
and Blossom. "You could ride in the stage, you know, and have to walk only
the least little bit," she said.

"Thank you; it is _such_ fun to throw stones in the water," he replied,
with elaborate politeness.

That Maurice was badly spoiled was no secret. The only boy in the family,
with bright, engaging ways when things went to please him, he had been
petted and humored by his parents, given up to by Katherine, and treated
as a leader by his boy friends, until he had come to look upon his own
pleasure as the most important thing in the universe. Not that he realized
this. He would have been greatly surprised to hear he was selfish.

The accident by which his knee had been sprained severely was an
experience as trying as it was new to him. At first the petting he
received at home, and the attentions of his friends, added to his sense of
importance and made it endurable, but this could not continue
indefinitely. Ball playing and other sports must go on, and Maurice, to
his aggrieved surprise, found they could go on very well without him.

This morning his mother had expostulated mildly. "My son, you ought not to
make yourself so miserable. You could not be more unhappy if you were to
be lame always."

"It is _now_ I care about," he replied petulantly.

"I don't know what to do with Maurice," he overheard her say to his father
in the hall.

"Let him alone. I am ashamed of him," was Mr. Roberts's reply.

And now, deserted and abused, Maurice was very miserable, and when he
could stand it no longer he sought a distant spot in the garden and threw
himself face down in the grass.

He had been lying here some time when a voice apparently quite near asked,
"Have you hurt yourself?"

Lifting his flushed, unhappy face, he saw peeping at him through the hedge
the girl Katherine had been so interested in on Sunday. She, too, was
lying on the grass, and her fair hair was spread out around her like a
veil. Maurice raised himself on his elbow and surveyed her in surprise,
forgetting to reply.

"What is the matter?" she asked again, looking at him with a pair of
serious gray eyes.

"Nothing," he answered.

The gray eyes grew merry. Rosal