n spite of all the things she had against Francis, Marjorie felt for
the moment as if there was something hurting her throat. She was sorry
for him, not in a general, pitying way, but the close way that hurts;
as if he was her little boy, and something had hurt him, and she
couldn't do anything about it.

"I'm--I'm sorry," she faltered, not looking at him.

He had evidently expected her to be angry--could she have been angry so
much as all that?--for he looked up with a relieved air.

"I thought you might like to go in there and rest while I went over to
where the work is being done," he said matter-of-factly. "I can't get
back to you or to the Lodge till just in time for Peggy's dance. But
you'll find things in the little cabin to amuse you, perhaps."

"Oh, I don't need things in the cabin to amuse me!" said Marjorie
radiantly. "There's enough outside of it to keep me amused for a whole
afternoon! But I do want to see in."

He took a key out of his pocket, and together they crossed the clearing
to where the little cabin stood, its rustic porch thick with vines.
Francis stood very still for a moment before he bent and put the key
into the padlock, and Marjorie saw with another tug at her heart that
his face was white, and held tense. She felt awed. Had it meant so
much to him, then?

She followed him in, subdued and yet somehow excited. He moved from
her side with a sort of push, and flung open the little casement
windows. The scented gloom, heavy with the aromatic odors of
life-everlasting and sweet fern, gave place to the fresh keen wind with
new pine-scents in it, and to the dappled sunshine.

"Oh, how _lovely_!" said Marjorie. "Oh, Francis! Do you know what
this place is? It's the place I've always planned I'd make for myself,
way off in the woods somewhere, when I had enough money. Only I
thought I'd never really see it, you know. . . . And here it is!"

He only said "Is it?" in a sort of suppressed way; but she said no
more. She only stood and looked about her.

There was a broad window-seat under the casement windows he had just
thrown open. It was cushioned in leaf-brown. A book lay on it, which
Marjorie came close to and looked at curiously.

"Oh--my own pet 'Wind in the Willows!'" she said delightedly. "How
queer!"

"No, not queer," said Francis quietly, from where he was unlocking an
inner door.

So Marjorie said no more. She laid the book down a little shyly and
investigated