uous shrug: "Wait until I give you an opportunity.
Floyd and I don't make fools of ourselves for any girls."

"Come, come, Harry!" said Jack, who had risen from the ground and was
now wiping off the earth-stains from his clothes, "don't spoil our day
by being disagreeable.--Shall we go on, Georgy?" He gave her a peculiar
glance in which there was less of humility than gentle command, and she
sprang after him and put her hand within his arm. He did not serve her
for rewards as yet, and was used to as many blows as smiles, and this
was a rare condescension on her part.

Georgy was fifteen--of the same age as Harry, but considerably younger
than Jack, who was two years older than his cousin, while I was the
youngest of the three. We had been playmates all our lives, and had each
of us found in Georgy Lenox the only girl-friend of our boyhood. She had
been a beauty from her infancy, and her wiles had grown with her growth
and strengthened with her strength; and now her myriad tricks of
mischief, caprice and cruelty were too closely identified with what was
most bewitching in her not to have become additional charms for us. In
those days, while we were still hobbledehoys, she pleased us the more
that she had, with the precocity of her sex, quite outstripped us where
all subtle social forces are concerned. Although she could be a hoyden
still, it was quite as easy for her to assume the part of an elegant
young lady, equipped for society with charming manners, a fastidious
taste and indifferent ease. We occasionally laughed at her airs, but
inwardly admired her superb assumptions of careless superiority: had she
become timid, docile, admiring toward us, I dare say her reign would not
have lasted the day out.

Harry flung his arm about me, and we followed Jack and Georgy deeper and
deeper into the wood. It was the last Saturday in May, and the fairest
day of the year. The thickets were full of mysterious sounds, and one
could almost feel the beating of the delicate pulses of the springing,
expanding life about us. I knew all the secrets of this forest, and
loved no place half so well in Belfield outside of my own home. Nature,
too, seemed tenderer of it than of other wildnesses, and had set the
seal of her choice upon it with every gift of fern and vine and moss and
lichen. No axe had invaded these solitudes for years except to prune
away a too riotous undergrowth along the cart-path: the trees grew in
grand natural aisles, a