rom his work to the supper that night.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GOOD-BY.

Diana Pitkin was like some of the fruits of her native hills, full of
juices which tend to sweetness in maturity, but which when not quite ripe
have a pretty decided dash of sharpness. There are grapes that require a
frost to ripen them, and Diana was somewhat akin to these.

She was a mettlesome, warm-blooded creature, full of the energy and
audacity of youth, to whom as yet life was only a frolic and a play
spell. Work never tired her. She ate heartily, slept peacefully, went to
bed laughing, and got up in a merry humor in the morning. Diana's laugh
was as early a note as the song of birds. Such a nature is not at first
sympathetic. It has in it some of the unconscious cruelty which belongs
to nature itself, whose sunshine never pales at human trouble. Eyes that
have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow. Moreover, a lively girl of
eighteen, looking at life out of eyes which bewilder others with their
brightness, does not always see the world truly, and is sometimes judged
to be heartless when she is only immature.

Nothing was further from Diana's thoughts than that any grave trouble was
overhanging her lover's mind--for her lover she very well knew that James
was, and she had arranged beforehand to herself very pretty little
comedies of life, to be duly enacted in the long vacation, in which James
was to appear as the suitor, and she, not too soon nor with too much
eagerness, was at last to acknowledge to him how much he was to her. But
meanwhile he was not to be too presumptuous. It was not set down in the
cards that she should be too gracious or make his way too easy. When,
therefore, he brushed by her hastily, on entering the house, with a
flushed cheek and frowning brow, and gave no glance of admiration at the
pretty toilet she had found time to make, she was slightly indignant. She
was as ignorant of the pang which went like an arrow through his heart at
the sight of her as the bobolink which whirrs and chitters and tweedles
over a grave.

She turned away and commenced a kitten-like frolic with Bill, who was
always only too happy to second any of her motions, and readily promised
that after supper she would go with him a walk of half a mile over to a
neighbor's, where was a corn-husking. A great golden lamp of a harvest
moon was already coming up in the fading flush of the evening sky, and
she promised herself much amusement in watchin