the sociable with Matt Pillsbury?"

She stiffened and flung back defiance.

"I'm goin', that's all. How'd you know it?"

"I was over to the store an' Lottie Pillsbury come in an' I heard her
tell Jane Hunt: 'Brother Matt asked her, an' she says she's goin'.'"

"Well, it's true enough. I expect him along in three-quarters of an
hour."

"Well, he won't come." That strange savage thrill in his voice
frightened her, and before she could remember they were not going
together, she was clinging to his arm.

"O Jerry," she breathed, "you ain't done him any mischief?" But his arms
were about her and she was locked to his heart.

"No," he said, "I ain't--yet." He laughed a little. "I stood out in the
road till I heard him go into the barn to harness. Then he went back
into the house to change his clo'es. An' I walked into the barn an'
unblanketed the horse an' slung away the bells an' druv the horse down
to the meetin'-house, an' left him there in the sheds."

Stella laughed with the delight of it. She felt wild and happy, and it
came to her that a man who could behave like this when he had made up
his mind, might be allowed a long time in coming to it. But she tried
reproving him.

"O Jerry, the horse'll freeze to death!"

"No, he won't. He's all blanketed. Besides, little Jim Pillsbury's there
tendin' the fire for the sociable, an' he'll find him. Now--" his voice
took on an added depth of that strange new quality she shivered
under--"Matt'll be over here in a minute to tell you he's lost his horse
an' can't go. You want me to harness up an' take him an' you in the old
pung, or you want to stay here with me?"

Stella touched his cheek with her finger in a way she had, and he
remembered and bent and kissed her.

"All right," he said. "That suits me. We'll stay here. Only, I don't
want to put ye to no shame before Matt. That's why I played a trick on
him instid o' breakin' his bones."

"O Jerry!" She had not meant to tell him, but it seemed she must. "I
wasn't goin' with him alone. Lottie was goin', too. I told him I
wouldn't any other way."

A GRIEF DEFERRED

When Clelia May set forth, as she did three and four times in the week,
to hurry through the half-mile of pine woods between her house and
Sabrina Thorne's, the family usually asked her, with the tolerant smile
accorded to old jokes, whether she was going to see her intimate friend.
Clelia always answered from a good-natured acceptance of the plea