Rivers dislikes it.
He wrote to me about it just before he left. Do you know, he did
really think that you ought to be a clergyman. He said you were so
serious-minded for--for a boy."

John laughed, "nice clergyman I'd have made." Did Leila too consider him
a boy? "Oh! here we are at the old cabin. I never forget the first day we
came here--and the graves. The older I grow, Leila, the more clearly I
can see the fight and the rifle-flashes, and the rescue--and the night--I
can feel their terror."

"Oh, we were mere children, John; and I do suppose that it is a pretty
well decorated tradition." He looked at her with surprise, as she added,
"I used to believe it all, now it seems strange to me, John--like a dream
of childhood. I think you really are a good deal of a boy yet."

"No, I am not a boy. I sometimes fancy I never was a boy--I came here a
child." And then, "I think you like to tease me, Leila," and this was
true, although she was not pleased to be told so. "You think, Leila, that
it teases me to be called a boy by your ladyship. I think it is because
you remember what a boy once said to you here--right here."

"What do you mean?" She knew very well what he meant, but quickly
repenting of her feminine fib, said, "Oh, I do know, but I wanted to
forget--I wanted to pretend to forget, because you know what friends we
have been, and it was really so foolish."

He had been lying at her feet; now he rose slowly. "You are not like my
Leila to-day."

"Oh, John!"

"No--and it is hard, because I am going away--and--it will not be
pleasant to think how you are changed."

"I wish you wouldn't say such things to me, John."

"I had to--because--I love you. If I was a boy when I was, as you say,
silly, I was in earnest. It was nonsense to ask you, to say you would
marry me some day. It wasn't so very long ago after all; but I agree with
you, it _was_ foolish. Now I mean to make no such proposal."

"Please, John." She looked up at him as he stood over her so grave, so
earnest--and so like Uncle Jim. For the time she got the fleeting
impression of this being a man.

He hardly heard her appeal. "I want to say now that I love you." For a
moment the 'boy's will, the wind's will,' blew a gale. "I love you and I
always shall. Some day I shall ask you that foolish question again, and
again."

She too was after all very young and had been playing a bit at being a
woman. Now his expression of passion embarrassed her--because