chief Alice
Barnes is. She whispers more than any other girl in school, and makes
more fun of him, and yet she is one of his prime favorites. Well, one
day last week, at noontime, while she was talking with three or four of
us girls, he came along, and she up and asked him if he wouldn't read
'The Raven' the next Wednesday afternoon when, you know, we all have
compositions, and then she winked at us. He took it all right, and you
ought to have heard the self-satisfied way in which he said: 'Certainly,
Miss Barnes. I shall be very happy to read it for you.' The way he
strutted across the schoolroom after that! Lida Stanton said he reminded
her of a turkey gobbler."

Manson laughed.

"Webber doesn't like me, either," he said, "and never has from the
first. I don't care. I came to the academy to learn, and not to curry
favor with him. Willie Converse is another of his pets and is cutting up
all the time, but he never sees it, or makes believe he does not."

The discussion of school affairs ended here, for even Manson's evident
dislike of the principal was not strong enough to overcome the mood he
was in. He sat in glum silence for a time, apparently buried in deep
thought, while Liddy rocked idly in her low chair opposite. The
crackling fire and the loud tick of the tall clock out in the hall were
the only sounds.

At last he arose, and going to the center table, where the lamp stood,
he took up a small daguerrotype of Liddy in a short dress, and looked at
it. The face was that of a young and pretty girl of ten, with big,
wondering eyes, a sweet mouth, and hair in curls.

"That was the way you looked," he said finally, "at the district school
the day I wrote a painful verse in your album and you gave me a lock of
hair. How time flies!"

"You are in a more painful mood to-night," responded Liddy, glad to talk
about anything. "You have the worst case of blues I ever saw;" and then
she added, after a pause, and in a low voice: "It makes me blue, too."

Manson made no reply, but sat down again and studied the fire. The
little note of sympathy in her voice was a strong temptation to him to
make a clean breast of it all; to tell her there and then how much he
loved her; what his hopes were, and how utterly in the dark he was as to
any definite plans in life. The thought made his heart beat loudly. He
looked at Liddy, quietly rocking on the opposite side of the fireplace.
A little touch of sadness had crept into her face,