d. "I thought we were
not to speak of my parents?" she said. "You ought not to have been the
first to break the compact, Uncle Paul."

"I accept the rebuke and beg your pardon," he said. He liked her all
the better for those little flashes of spirit across her girlish
composure.

One day in September they were together in the garden at Greenwood.
Worth, looking lovingly and regretfully down the sun-flecked avenue of
box, said with a sigh, "Next month I must go home. How sorry I shall
be to leave the Grange and Greenwood. I have had such a delightful
summer, and I have learned to love all the old nooks and corners as
well as if I had lived here all my life."

"Stay here!" said Uncle Paul abruptly. "Stay here with me. I want you,
Worth. Let Greenwood be your home henceforth and adopt your crusty old
bachelor uncle for a father."

"Oh, Uncle Paul," cried Worth, "I don't know--I don't think--oh, you
surprise me!"

"I surprise myself, perhaps. But I mean it, Worth. I am a rich, lonely
old man and I want to keep this new interest you have brought into my
life. Stay with me. I will try to give you a very happy life, my
child, and all I have shall be yours."

Seeing her troubled face, he added, "There, I don't ask you to decide
right here. I suppose you have other claims to adjust. Take time to
think it over."

"Thank you," said Worth. She went back to the Grange as one in a
dream and shut herself up in the white southeast room to think. She
knew that she wanted to accept this unexpected offer of Uncle Paul's.
Worth's loyal tongue had never betrayed, even to the loving aunts, any
discontent in the prairie farm life that had always been hers. But it
had been a hard life for the girl, narrow and poverty-bounded. She
longed to put forth her hand and take this other life which opened so
temptingly before her. She knew, too, that her mother, ambitious for
her child, would not be likely to interpose any objections. She had
only to go to Uncle Paul and all that she longed for would be given
her, together with the faithful, protecting fatherly love and care
that in all its strength and sweetness had never been hers.

She must decide for herself. Not even of Aunt Charlotte or Aunt Ellen
could she ask advice. She knew they would entreat her to accept, and
she needed no such incentive to her own wishes. Far on into the night
Worth sat at the white-curtained dormer window, looking at the stars
over the apple trees, and fighting