o venture it, a voice
came from under the tree.

"Don't stay there, playmate. Come into the house."

Then she went on.

"Where are you?" she asked. There was an eloquent quiver in her voice.

"Never mind. I'm in the house. Stop where you are. There's a little
throne. I made it for you."

She had her hand on the back of a rough chair. At once she seated
herself.

"I never heard of a throne in a playhouse," she said, with that new
merriment he made for her.

"You never saw a playhouse just like this. That's a beautiful throne. It
fits together like a chair. It's here in the playhouse by night, but
before daylight I draw it up into the tree and hide it."

"What if somebody finds it?"

"They'll think it's a chair."

"What if they break it?"

"That's easy. We'll make another. There's nothing so easy as to make a
throne for a playhouse, if you know the way. Well, playmate, how have
you been, all this long time?"

When she came across the field she had meant to tell him how sad she
was, how perplexed, how incapable of meeting the ills confronting her.
But immediately it became unnecessary, and she only laughed and said,--

"It hasn't been a long time at all."

"Hasn't it? Oh, I thought it had!"

"Have you been here every night?"

"Every night."

"But it rained."

"I know it, outside. It doesn't rain in a playhouse."

"Did you truly come?"

"Of course. What did I tell you? I said 'every night.'"

"Did you have an umbrella?"

"An umbrella in a playhouse? You make me laugh."

"You must have got wet through."

"Not always. Sometimes I climbed up in the branches--in the roof, I
mean. You're eclipsed to-night, aren't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"That dark cloak. The other night you were a white goddess sitting there
in the moonlight. You were terribly beautiful then. It's almost a shame
to be so beautiful. This is better. I rather like the cloak. You're
nothing but a voice to-night, coming out of the dark."

Immediately she had a curious jealousy of the white dress that made her
beautiful to him when he did not really know her face.

"You have never seen me," she said involuntarily.

"Oh yes, I have. In the shack, that night. Then the day you came. I saw
you driving by."

"Where were you?"

"In the yard looking at some grafted trees. Peter was late from the
train. I got impatient, so I went round fussing over the trees, to keep
myself busy. Then you came up the drive, and I saw you and retr