I ever see you
again?"

The thought was so overwhelming that her tears came now from quite a
different cause, and the frank eyes threatened to overflow as she stood
clasping his bony hand in hers insistently. "What will I do without you?"
she sobbed.

The unexpected question and the unexpected tears had an uncomfortable
effect on the boy. He grew suddenly embarrassed and drew his hand away.

Some indefinable thing about the action made her conscious that there was
a change in his feelings. It checked her rising emotions and made her
curious. What was he embarrassed about? The girl stole a look at him,
which left him still more disturbed and uneasy. It was an intangible thing
upon which she could not remark and yet could not fail to recognize.
Luther had never been awkward in her presence before. Their association
had been of the most offhand and informal character. As a boy of fifteen
he had carried her, a girl of eleven, over many a snowbank their first
winter of school in the Prairie Home school district. They had herded
cattle together, waded the shallow ponds and hunted for mussel shells, and
until this year they had seen each other daily. This year Luther had taken
a man's place in the fields and the girl had seen him at rare intervals.
She was not conscious of the change which this year of dawning adolescence
had brought to them both. Luther had developed a growing need of a razor
on his thin, yellow face, while she, four years younger, had also matured.
The outgrown calico dress she wore was now halfway to her knees, its
sleeves exposed some inches of sunburned wrists, and the scanty waist
disclosed a rapidly rounding form. Young womanhood was upon her, unknown
to her, and but now discovered by Luther Hansen. For the first time Luther
felt the hesitancy of a youth in the presence of a maid.

"I shall miss you _so!_" the girl said, looking at him, puzzled by the
indefinable something in his manner which was a new element in their
communications.

Her frank curiosity put the boy utterly to rout. The blood surged to his
pale face and pounded in the veins under his ears, half choking him; it
cut short the leave-taking and left the child bewildered and half hurt.

She watched the calico pony lope away in a cloud of scurrying grasshoppers
and wondered in a child-like way what could have happened. This abrupt and
confused departure increased the loneliness she felt. He was her one real
friend, and her tears came a