hurry, Betty, supper's ready. I wouldn't touch my hair, if I
were you, it looks just lovely." Her white skirts fluttered across the
dimly lighted hall, and in a moment Betty heard her soft step on the stair.

Two days later Betty told Dan good-by with smiling lips. He rode over in
the early morning, when she was in the garden gathering loose rose leaves
to scatter among her clothes. There had been a sharp frost the night
before, and now as it melted in the slanting sun rays, Miss Lydia's summer
flowers hung blighted upon their stalks. Only the gay October roses were
still in their full splendour.

"What an early Betty," said Dan, coming up to her as she stood in the wet
grass beside one of the quaint rose squares. "You are all dewy like a
flower."

"Oh, I had breakfast an hour ago," she answered, giving him her moist hand
to which a few petals were clinging.

"Ye Gods! have I missed an hour? Why, I expected to sit waiting on the
door-step until you had had your sleep out."

"Don't you know if you gather rose leaves with the dew on them, their
sweetness lasts twice as long?" asked Betty.

"So you got up to gather ye rosebuds, after all, and not to wish me God
speed?" he said despondently.

"Well, I should have been up anyway," replied Betty, frankly. "This is the
loveliest part of the day, you know. The world looks so fresh with the
first frost over it--only the poor silly summer flowers take cold and die."

"If you weren't a rose, you'd take cold yourself," remarked Dan, pointing,
with his riding-whip, to the hem of her dimity skirt. "Don't stand in the
grass like that, you make me shiver."

"Oh, the sun will dry me," she laughed, stepping from the path to the bare
earth of the rose bed. "Why, when you get well into the sunshine it feels
like summer." She talked on merrily, and he, paying small heed to what she
said, kept his ardent look upon her face. His joy was in her bright
presence, in the beauty of her smile, in the kind eyes that shone upon him.
Speech meant so little when he could put out his arm and touch her if he
dared.

"I am going away in an hour, Betty," he said, at last.

"But you will be back again at Christmas."

"At Christmas! Heavens alive! You speak as if it were to-morrow."

"Oh, but time goes very quickly, you know."

Dan shook his head impatiently. "I dare say it does with you," he returned,
irritably, "but it wouldn't if you were as much in love as I am."

"Why, you ought to be u