close range, these little
peculiarities of mine, which you have labeled defects, will turn out to
be budding virtues of the finest quality."

"Ah, then, most perfect and approved good master, you must give me back
my pledge. I could stand a few faults and minor vices in my future
lord; but such an array of excellencies appals me. I wed you not, Sir
Paragon," she said, looking him full in the face and then dropping him
a mocking little courtesy.

"'By my troth and holidame,' I could have better spared a better
Betty!" Abner exclaimed with mock fervor. "No, no, sweet mistress mine,
rather than resign this dimpled hand of thine, I'll begin at once to
uproot all my promising little sprouts of virtue, and plant in their
stead an assortment of fine, robust misdemeanors, for which, in truth,
the soil is well adapted."

"Very well, then," she said with an air of resignation, "I foresee that
I shall have to grow a few additional faults myself, to compete with
you."

"And I don't think, my dearest, that you'll have much difficulty in
doing so," was his audacious rejoinder, as he pinched her cheek.
"Natural aptitude counts for a great deal, you know."

"Methinks, my lord, too much happiness hath weakened thy brain; what
nonsense thou dost chatter," and she laughed with joyous abandon.

"Oh, anybody can talk sense, but it takes a heap o' sense to talk
nonsense sensibly," he said suavely, with a fine air of
self-complacency. "Until to-day I did not know I had it in me to be so
brilliant a conversationalist. Happiness is bringing out all my latent
abilities. Ah, Betty, sweetest, dearest, most bewitching of girls," he
added, fervently, "how happy you have made me!"

They were now seated on a fallen tree, he indulging in a blissful sense
of happiness realized, she sitting quiet and somewhat pensive.
Presently he asked: "Of what are you thinking? Your brown eyes are
filled with something that is almost sadness. Have you any regrets, any
unfilled wish? I haven't--except that November might have come sooner."

"Yes, I have a regret," said Betty, laying her hand upon his shoulder
and looking wistfully at him. "I give you everything--my present, my
future, and my past; but you--I know you love me now, but I am not the
one you loved first. That is what makes me sad. I want your past as
well as your present and future. Perhaps you think I didn't see. You
supposed, when you were so miserable after Abby went away, that I
didn't unders