leasure of it. Here, let me
pin on your crown, and then run straight upstairs to the red room and
get mammy to mend your flounce. It won't take her a minute. There, now,
you're all the prettier for a high colour."

When she had pushed Bessy across the threshold with her small, strong
hands, she turned to me, laughing a little, and slipped her arm into
mine with the air of a young queen bestowing a favour.

"It's just as well, Ben Starr," she said, "that you're engaged to me for
this dance, and not to a timid lady."

It wasn't my dance, I knew; in fact, I had not had sufficient boldness
to ask her for one, and I discovered the next minute, when she sent away
rather impatiently a youth who approached, that she had taken such
glorious possession merely from some indomitable instinct to give people
pleasure.

"Shall we sit down and talk a little over there under the smilax?" she
asked, "or would you rather dance? If you'd like to dance," she added
with a sparkle in her face, "I am not afraid."

"Well, I am," I retorted, "I shall never dance again."

"How serious that sounds--but since you've made the resolution I hope
you'll keep it. I like things to be kept."

"There's no chance of my breaking it. I never made but one other solemn
vow in my life."

"And you've kept that?"

"I am keeping it now."

She sat down, arranging her white draperies under the festoons of
smilax, her left hand, from which a big feather fan drooped, resting on
her knees, her small, white-slippered foot moving to the sound of the
waltz.

"Was it a vow not to grow any more?" she asked with a soft laugh.

"It was," I leaned toward her and the fragrance of the white rose,
drooping a little in her wreath of plaits, filled my nostrils, "that I
would not stay common."

Her lashes, which had been lowered, were raised suddenly, and I met her
eyes. "O Ben Starr, Ben Starr," she said, "how well you have kept it!"

"Do you remember the stormy night when you would not let me take your
wet cap because I was a common boy?".

"How hateful I must have been!"

"On that night I determined that I would not grow up to be a common man.
That was why I ran away, that was why I went into the tobacco factory,
that was why I started to learn Johnson's Dictionary by heart--why I
drudged over my Latin, why I went into stocks, why--"

Her eyes had not left my face, but unfurling the big feather fan, she
waved it slowly between us. I, who had, in the words of