pattered her shoes--and if there was anything Betty liked,
it was to have her shoes very neat.

"Oh, Kitty! I hate your running under my feet that way all the time."
Betty was almost in tears. She set the saucer down and tried to wipe
off the milk, while the cat crouched before the dish and began
drinking eagerly and unthankfully, after the manner of cats.

Some one stood silently watching her from the kitchen steps as she
walked slowly up the path, gazing down on the ruin of the pretty
starched ruffles.

"Why, Richard!" was all she said, for something came up in her throat
and choked her. She waited where she stood, and in his eyes, her
aspect seemed that of despair. Was it all for the spilled milk?

"Why, Betty dear!" He caught her and kissed her and laughed at her and
comforted her all at once. "Not tears, dear? Tears to greet me? You
didn't half greet me last evening, and I came only to see you. Now you
will, where there's no one to see and no one to hear? Yes. Never mind
the spilled milk, you know better than that." But Betty lay in his
arms, a little crumpled wisp of sorrow, white and still.

"Away off there in Cheyenne I got to thinking of you, and I went to
headquarters and asked to be sent on this commission just to get the
chance to run up here and tell you I have been waiting all these years
for you to grow up. You have haunted me ever since I left Leauvite.
You darling, your laughing face was always with me, on the march--in
prison--and wherever I've been since. I've been trying to keep myself
right--for you--so I might dare some day to take you in my arms like
this and tell you--so I need not be ashamed before your--"

"Oh, Richard, wait!" wailed Betty, but he would not wait.

"I've waited long enough. I see you are grown up before I even dreamed
you could be. Thank heaven I came now! You are so sweet some one would
surely have won you away from me--but no one can now--no one."

"Richard, why didn't you tell me this when you first came home from
the war--before you went to Scotland? I would--"

"Not then, sweetheart; I couldn't. I didn't even know then I would
ever be worth the love of any woman; and--you were such a child
then--I couldn't intrude my weariness--my worn-out self on you. I was
sick at heart when I got out of that terrible prison; but now it is
all changed. I am my own man now, dependent on no one, and able to
marry you out of hand, Betty, dear. After you've told me something,
I'll d