room.

For an hour Louise sat on the floor in the darkness and
listened. Without words Mary Hardy, with the aid of the
man who had come to spend the evening with her, brought
to the country girl a knowledge of men and women.
Putting her head down until she was curled into a
little ball she lay perfectly still. It seemed to her
that by some strange impulse of the gods, a great gift
had been brought to Mary Hardy and she could not
understand the older woman's determined protest.

The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed
her. When she struggled and laughed, he but held her
the more tightly. For an hour the contest between them
went on and then they went back into the parlor and
Louise escaped up the stairs. "I hope you were quiet
out there. You must not disturb the little mouse at her
studies," she heard Harriet saying to her sister as she
stood by her own door in the hallway above.

Louise wrote a note to John Hardy and late that night,
when all in the house were asleep, she crept downstairs
and slipped it under his door. She was afraid that if
she did not do the thing at once her courage would
fail. In the note she tried to be quite definite about
what she wanted. "I want someone to love me and I want
to love someone," she wrote. "If you are the one for me
I want you to come into the orchard at night and make a
noise under my window. It will be easy for me to crawl
down over the shed and come to you. I am thinking about
it all the time, so if you are to come at all you must
come soon."

For a long time Louise did not know what would be the
outcome of her bold attempt to secure for herself a
lover. In a way she still did not know whether or not
she wanted him to come. Sometimes it seemed to her that
to be held tightly and kissed was the whole secret of
life, and then a new impulse came and she was terribly
afraid. The age-old woman's desire to be possessed had
taken possession of her, but so vague was her notion of
life that it seemed to her just the touch of John
Hardy's hand upon her own hand would satisfy. She
wondered if he would understand that. At the table next
day while Albert Hardy talked and the two girls
whispered and laughed, she did not look at John but at
the table and as soon as possible escaped. In the
evening she went out of the house until she was sure he
had taken the wood to her room and gone away. When
after several evenings of intense listening she heard
no call from the