dly with a vague expectation, "I think
heaven must be very, very near on nights like this, don't--you--Rufus?"

I wasn't thinking of heaven at all, at least, not the heaven she had in
mind; but if there is one thing to make a man swear white is black and
black white and to bring him to instantaneous agreement with any
statement whatsoever, it is to hear his Christian name so spoken for the
first time. I sat up in an electrified way that brought the fringe of
lashes down to hide those gray eyes.

"Very near? Well rather! I've been in heaven all day," I vowed. "I've
been getting glimpses of paradise all the way from Fort William----"

"Don't," she interrupted with a flash of the imperious nature, which I
knew. "Please don't, Mr. Gillespie."

"Please don't Mister Gillespie me," said I, piqued by a return to the
formal. "If you picked up Rufus by mistake from the priest, he sets a
good example. Don't drop a good habit!"

That was my first step inside the outworks.

"Rufus," she answered so gently I felt she might disarm and slay me if
she would, "Rufus Gillespie"--that was a return of the old spirit, a
compromise between her will and mine--"please don't begin saying that
sort of thing--there's a whole day before us----"

"And you think I can't keep it up?"

"You haven't given any sign of failing. You know, Rufus," she added
consolingly, "you really must not say those things, or something will be
hurt! You'll make me hurt it."

"Something is hurt and needs mending, Miss Sutherland----"

"Don't Miss Sutherland me," she broke in with a laugh, "call me Frances;
and if something is hurt and needs mending, I'm not a tinker, though my
father and the priest--yes and you, too--sometimes think so. But sisters
do mending, don't they?" and she laughed my earnestness off as one would
puff out a candle.

"No--no--no--not sisters--not that," I protested. "I have no sisters,
Little Statue. I wouldn't know how to act with a sister, unless she
were somebody else's sister, you know. I can't stand the sisterly
business, Frances----"

"Have you suffered much from the sisterly?" she asked with a merry
twinkle.

"No," I hastened to explain, "I don't know how to play the sisterly
touch-and-go at all, but the men tell me it doesn't work--dead failure,
always ends the same. Sister proposes, or is proposed to----"

"Oh!" cried the Little Statue with the faintest note of alarm, and she
moved back from me on the boxes. "I think we'd be