ays:
"Well, Mitch, you know me--I'm true blue, and I'll stand by you, and if
you want to tell me, just tell me, and I'll never peach as long as I
live."

So Mitch says: "Well, Skeet, I have a different feelin' toward you from
what I have towards Zueline. You see I don't want to protect you, or
take care of you, and of course I'd fight for you, or help you any way I
could. But it's different with Zueline--I'd die for her, and sometimes I
want to, specially if she'd die at the same time, and our funerals could
be together and we could be buried in the same grave. I have the same
feelin' about her that I have when I look at them stars, I just get full
in the throat, and don't know what I am or where I am, or what to do."

"Well," says I, "I know that, Mitch, leastways I suspicioned it--or
somethin' like it, from the way you always treated Zueline, but tell me
what in the world has happened."

"The worst has happened," says Mitch. "They've taken her away from me."

"How do you mean?" says I.

"Well," says Mitch, "the day before I came out to the farm to get you,
Mrs. Hasson came over to see ma. I was out in the yard gettin' some
kindlin' for the wood box, and I saw Mrs. Hasson coming. She never comes
to see ma, and I wondered what it could be about. So I went up-stairs
and looked down into the settin' room through the pipe-hole in the
floor and heard everything they said. And this is about it.

"Mrs. Hasson began by sayin' to ma: 'I think you have a very remarkable
boy, and I don't want to see any harm come to him, and so I've come over
here, Mrs. Miller, to talk about your boy and Zueline.' 'What's the
matter?' says ma, in a scared way. 'Nothing,' says Mrs. Hasson, 'except
I never see a boy of his age so attached to a girl, so in love with
her,' she says, 'for that's it; and it won't do.' And ma says, 'I never
noticed it. Of course I knew they played together and was little
sweethearts like children will be. All the children play together just
like lambs, as you might say.' 'Well,' says Mrs. Hasson, 'they are
lambs; Zueline is a lamb and so is Mitch. But it's clear out of the way
for children to have such a deep feelin' for each other--it scares me.
And while I don't think Zueline feels exactly the same way, it's not the
thing for a girl of twelve to be so much taken up with a little boy; nor
for a little boy to be so completely absorbed in a little girl. So I've
come over to tell you that we must work together to se