ss lots' from the
station. You fell--Sharley, you fell right at my feet!"

He spoke carelessly, but Sharley, looking up, saw that his face was
white.

"I believe I will get down," she observed, after some consideration,
lifting her head.

"I don't see how you can, you know," he suggested, helplessly; "it pours
as straight as a deluge out there. There isn't room in this place for
two people to sit."

So they "accepted the situation."

The clouds broke presently, and rifts of yellow light darted in through
the fragrant, wet pine boards. Sharley's hair had fallen from her net
and covered her face. She felt too weak to push it away. After some
thought Halcombe Dike pushed it away for her, reverently, with his
strong, warm hand. The little white, trembling face shone out. He turned
and looked at it--the poor little face!--looked at it gravely and long.

But Sharley, at the look, sat up straight. Her heart leaped out into the
yellow light. All her dreary winter danced and dwindled away. Through
the cracks in the pine boards a long procession of May-days came filing
in. The scattering rain-drops flamed before her. "All the world and all
the waters blushed and bloomed." She was so very young!

"I could not speak," he told her quietly, "when I was at home before. I
could never speak till now. Last October I thought"--his voice sinking
hoarsely--"I thought, Sharley, it could never be. I could barely eke out
my daily bread; I had no right to ask you--to bind you. You were very
young; I thought, perhaps, Sharley, you might forget. Somebody else
might make you happier. I would not stand in the way of your happiness.
I asked God to bless you that morning when I went away in the cars,
Sharley. Sharley!"

Something in her face he could not understand. All that was meant by
the upturned face perhaps he will never understand. She hid it in her
bright, brown hair; put her hand up softly upon his cheek and cried.

"If you would like to hear anything about the business part of it--"
suggested the young man, clearing his throat. But Sharley "hated
business." She would not hear.

"Not about the Crumpet Buildings? Well, I carried that affair
through,--that's all."

They came out under the wide sky, and walked home hand in hand. All the
world was hung with crystals. The faint shadow of a rainbow quivered
across a silver cloud.

The first thing that Sharley did when she came home was to find Moppet
and squeeze him.

"O Moppet,