to do it. And I want to know why."

He turned and looked at her again. The cheek next him was pink, and
momentarily growing pinker. Sally again murmured something which sounded
like "perfectly absurd." But Jarvis considered that no answer at all. The
car began to climb a long grade.

"Please tell me," he urged.

"There's nothing to tell," said the girl, reluctantly. "There are ever so
many of us, now, and we're naturally all together--or some of us are
together--"

"And some of us aren't."

"We're just a lot of boys and girls--"

"Are we? I feel rather grown up myself."

Sally spoke quickly. "I'm not. Or, at least, I don't want to be. I want
to stay a girl--a little girl, I'd be, if I could--just as long as I can.
I want to have good times--all together. Not--two and two." The cheek
next him was a very deep pink indeed, now.

"Do I try to make it 'two and two'?"

"You seem to."

"And you don't want me to?"

"No."

"If I happen to see you alone in the garden, must I go and get your Uncle
Tim or my mother?"

"Not if you'll talk sense."

"I don't talk sense?"

Sally did not answer this question, so he repeated it, in the form of an
accepted statement: "So I don't talk sense."

This certainly called loudly for an explanation, and Sally made it--in a
way. "I think you know what I mean."

"I know what _I_ mean, but I didn't know it deserved that name."

"It's only--" Sally hesitated, then she went through with it, speaking
hurriedly: "I don't want you to bother about me--doing things for
me--except as you do them for us all. You--you--are getting--"

"Well, what am I getting? Out with it!"

"To seem--not like my old friend Jarvis Burnside. And--I'd rather have
him back."

It was certainly out now. Jarvis drove on up the hill steadily, without
any further questioning. It was precisely like Sally thus bravely to have
shown him where he stood. It was a position clearly defined; he had stood
on it so long that he ought surely to be able easily to go back to it.
But he had driven to the top of the hill and on for two miles down the
road, had taken the turn to the left and pursued that road for another
mile, so that he was nearly at his destination, before he spoke. When at
last he did speak it was only to say, very quietly and cheerfully--at
least, so it sounded:

"All right, Sally."

Then he turned in at an open gate, and in less than five minutes,
with the hay-fork and tackle and ropes at their f