ttle afraid of him, and,
moreover, that she did not like him all the better for it. It was such a
novel feeling that it began to make some things, thought of in connection
with him, seem more possible to her mind than they had ever seemed
before. As she peeped furtively at this young man, so suddenly grown
formidable, as he reclined carelessly on the ground at her feet, she
admitted to herself that there was something very manly in the sturdy
figure and square forehead, with the curly black locks hanging over it.
She looked at him with a new interest, half shrinking, half attracted, as
one who might come into a very close relation with herself. She scarcely
knew whether the thought was agreeable or not.

"Give me your hat," she said, "and I'll put some lilies in it."

"You are very good," said he, handing it to her.

"Does it strike you so?" she replied, hesitatingly. "Then I won't do it.
I don't want to appear particularly good to you. I didn't know just how
it would seem."

"Oh, it won't seem very good; only about middling," he urged, upon which
representation she took the hat.

He watched her admiringly as she deftly wreathed the lilies around it,
holding it up, now this way and now that, while she critically inspected
the effect.

Then her caprice changed. "I've half a mind to drop it into the river.
Would you jump after it?" she said, twirling it by the brim, and looking
over the steep bank, near which she sat, into the deep, dark water almost
perpendicularly below.

"If it were anything of yours instead of mine, I would jump quickly
enough," he replied.

She looked at him with a reckless gleam in her eyes.

"You mustn't talk chaff to me, sir; we'll see," and, snatching a glove
from her pocket, she held it out over the water. They were both of them
in that state of suppressed excitement which made such an experiment on
each other's nerve dangerous. Their eyes met, and neither flinched. If
she had dropped it, he would have gone after it.

"After all," she said, suddenly, "that would be taking a good deal of
trouble to get a mitten. If you are so anxious for it, I will give it to
you now;" and she held out the glove to him with an inscrutable face.

He sprang up from the ground. "Madeline, do you mean it?" he asked,
scarcely audibly, his face grown white and pinched. She crumpled the
obnoxious glove into her pocket.

"Why, you poor fellow!" she exclaimed, the wildfire in her eyes quenched
in a moment w