see him hangin' around any since she
got back, and the way you was actin' when I see you struttin' into the
parsonage yard last night afore mail time made me think you must have a
first mortgage on Helen and her pa and the house and the meetin'-house
and two-thirds of the graveyard. I never see such an important-lookin'
critter in MY life. Haw, haw! Eh? How 'bout it?"

Albert did not mind the Price sarcasm; instead he felt rather grateful
to have the proletariat recognize that he had triumphed again. The fly
in his ointment, so to speak, was the fact that Helen herself did not in
the least recognize that triumph. She laughed at him.

"Don't look at me like that, please, please, don't," she begged.

"Why not?" with a repetition of the look.

"Because it is silly."

"Silly! Well, I like that! Aren't you and I engaged? Or just the same as
engaged?"

"No, of course we are not."

"But we promised each other--"

"No, we did not. And you know we didn't."

"Helen, why do you treat me that way? Don't you know that--that I just
worship the ground you tread on? Don't you know you're the only girl in
this world I could ever care for? Don't you know that?"

They were walking home from church Sunday morning and had reached the
corner below the parsonage. There, screened by the thicket of young
silver-leafs, she stopped momentarily and looked into his face. Then she
walked on.

"Don't you know how much I care?" he repeated.

She shook her head. "You think you do now, perhaps," she said, "but you
will change your mind."

"What do you mean by that? How do you know I will?"

"Because I know you. There, there, Albert, we won't quarrel, will we?
And we won't be silly. You're an awfully nice boy, but you are just a
boy, you know."

He was losing his temper.

"This is ridiculous!" he declared. "I'm tired of being grandmothered
by you. I'm older than you are, and I know what I'm doing. Come, Helen,
listen to me."

But she would not listen, and although she was always kind and frank and
friendly, she invariably refused to permit him to become sentimental. It
irritated him, and after she had gone the irritation still remained. He
wrote her as before, although not quite so often, and the letters were
possibly not quite so long. His pride was hurt and the Speranza pride
was a tender and important part of the Speranza being. If Helen noted
any change in his letters she did not refer to it nor permit it to
influence her own,