e. I don't want you to think I am the sort
of girl who is kissed by moonlight."

"I'd never think that," Angus said. "I think you are the finest girl in
the world."

She stared at him in amazement, as much at his tone as at the words.

"Why, Angus!" she exclaimed.

"I do," he asseverated, "the very finest! I've wanted to tell you so,
but I hadn't the nerve. I--I think an awful lot of you."

So there it was at last, blurted out with boyish clumsiness.

"Good heavens!" cried Alice Page. "I never--why, Angus, my dear boy--"
She laughed and checked herself, and the laugh turned into a little
hysterical sob, and without any further warning she began to cry.

Utterly dismayed Angus stood helpless. And then, because it always
seemed to comfort Jean when in trouble, he put his arm around her. For a
moment Alice Page leaned against him, just as Jean did, but somehow the
sensation was quite different. Very hesitatingly and awkwardly, but
doing it as well and carefully as he knew how, he kissed her. Whereupon
Alice Page jumped as if he had bitten her.

"You, too!" she cried. "O Angus! Oh, good heavens, what a night! Let me
go, Angus!"

He let her go, feeling all palpitant and vibrant, for he had never
kissed any girl, save Jean, who naturally did not count, but glad that
at any rate he had stopped her crying. And Alice Page, who had a large
store of common sense, did the very best thing possible. Sitting down on
the bank of the ditch she made him sit beside her, and talked to him so
gently and frankly that after a while, though he still considered
himself to be in love, he felt resigned to its hopelessness, and in fact
rather proud of his broken heart and blighted life, as boys are apt to
be. Indeed, with his knowledge that he had squared the account with
Garland, he was almost happy.

CHAPTER VI

GAIN AND LOSS

Alice Page was but an episode in the life of the Mackays, but her
influence was far-reaching, at least with Angus and Jean. She stimulated
in the former a taste for reading, dormant and unsuspected. She made him
see that he was wasting his evenings, and she got him books of history
and travel and voyages, with a sprinkling of the classics of English
fiction. Angus, who had been unaware that such books existed, took to
them like a young eagle to the air, for they opened the door to the
romances of the world.

Though nobody save Alice Page suspected it, the grim-faced boy was full
of the romance of y