y
to one side, and said, 'Pooh! as if you really cared!' But the boy
stoutly maintained his position, and it was that, perhaps, which made
her play the little joke one day.

"The boy was fourteen that summer, and the girl thirteen. They had
begun their signals years before, but they had not had the black one so
long. On this day that I tell you of, the girl waved three waves, which
meant, 'Dead Day,' you remember, and watched until the boy had hoisted
his black flag which said, 'I'm heart-broken,' in response. Then, as
fast as her mischievous little feet could carry her, she raced down one
hill and across to the other. Very stealthily she advanced till she
found the boy bent over a puzzle on the back stoop, and--and he was
whistling merrily.

"How she teased him then! How she taunted him with 'Heart-broken,
indeed--and whistling like that!' In vain he blushed and stammered, and
protested that his whistling was only to keep up his spirits. The girl
only laughed and tossed her yellow curls; then she hunted till she
found some little jingling bells, and these she tied to the black badge
of mourning and pulled it high up on the flagpole. The next instant she
was off with a run and a skip, and a saucy wave of her hand; and the
boy was left all alone with an hour's work ahead of him to untie the
knots from his desecrated badge of mourning.

"And yet they were wonderfully good friends--this boy and girl. From
the very first, when they were seven and eight, they had said that they
would marry each other when they grew up, and always they spoke of it
as the expected thing, and laid many happy plans for the time when it
should come. To be sure, as they grew older, it was not mentioned quite
so often, perhaps; but the boy at least thought--if he thought of it
all--that that was only because it was already so well understood."

"What did the girl think?" It was Jill who asked the question.

"Eh? The girl? Oh," answered Mr. Jack, a little bitterly, "I'm afraid I
don't know exactly what the girl did think, but--it was n't that,
anyhow--that is, judging from what followed."

"What did follow?"

"Well, to begin with, the old aunt died. The girl was sixteen then. It
was in the winter that this happened, and the girl was far away at
school. She came to the funeral, however, but the boy did not see her,
save in the distance; and then he hardly knew her, so strange did she
look in her black dress and hat. She was there only two day