m around her, he drew her away
and out to the seat under the old silver-leaf poplar tree.

"You're acting silly, Peter Junior,--and my bread will all spoil and
get too light,--and my hands are all covered with flour, and--"

"And you'll sit right here while I talk to you a bit, if the bread
spoils and gets too light and everything burns to a cinder." She
started to run away from him, and his peremptory tone changed to
pleading. "Please, Betty, dear! just hear me this far. I'm going away,
Betty, and I love you. No, sit close and be my sweetheart. Dear, it
isn't the old thing. It's love, and it's what I want you to feel for
me. I woke up yesterday, and found I loved you." He held her closer
and lifted her face to his. "You must wake up, too, Betty; we can't
play always. Say you'll love me and be my wife--some day--won't you,
Betty?"

She drooped in his arms, hanging her head and looking down on her
floury hands.

"Say it, Betty dear, won't you?"

Her lip quivered. "I don't want to be anybody's wife--and, anyway--I
liked you better the other way."

"Why, Betty? Tell me why."

"Because--lots of reasons. I must help mother--and I'm only seventeen,
and--"

"Most eighteen, I know, because--"

"Well, anyway, mother says no girl of hers shall marry before she's of
age, and she says that means twenty-one, and--"

"That's all right. I can wait. Kiss me, Betty." But she was silent,
with face turned from him. Again he lifted her face to his. "I say,
kiss me, Betty. Just one? That was a stingy little kiss. You know I'm
going away, and that is why I spoke to you now. I didn't dare go
without telling you this first. You're so sweet, Betty, some one might
find you out and love you--just as I have--only not so deeply in love
with you--no one could--but some one might come and win you away from
me, and so I must make sure that you will marry me when you are of age
and I come back for you. Promise me."

"Where?--why--Peter Junior! Where are you going?" Betty removed his
arm from around her waist and slipped to her own end of the seat.
There, with hands folded decorously in her lap, with heightened color
and serious eyes, she looked shyly up at him. He had never seen her
shy before. Always she had been merry and teasing, and his heart was
proud that he had wrought such a miracle in her.

"I am going to Paris. I mean to be an artist." He leaned toward her
and would have taken her in his arms again, but she put his hands
away