sked
himself, how was it that Eperson was always so ready with his tongue
when in Tilly's presence? But Tilly seemed to understand John's way and
not to care much whether he talked or was silent. As he dared to glance
down on her pretty head just below his left shoulder he remembered the
bride and the bridegroom on the train, and the contractor's words came
back to him like breeze music from the waving tops of celestial trees:
"It is ahead of you, my boy."

Ahead of him? Marriage? A home for Tilly and himself alone? She, his
wife?--actually his wife? Absurd! Impossible! The bare thought, checked
though it was, set fire to his brain and he was thrilled in all his
nerves and members. He caught her upward glance and she smiled almost as
if she had glimpsed his vision and was thus responding to it.

"You don't like Joel," she said, knowing full well that that remark
would prod his tardy speech.

"Well, what if I don't?" he answered, with querulous sharpness.

"Well, you shouldn't dislike him," the little minx continued,
designedly. "He hasn't done you any harm. How could he? You have known
each other such a short time."

Had John been other than the crude working-boy that he was, he might
have made a more adroit answer, but, even as it was, it was not
unpleasing to his sly tormentor.

"What is he hanging around you so much for?" John demanded. "I've heard
that your father doesn't like him. What does he mean by coming, at the
slightest excuse, like to-night, for instance?"

"Joel and I have been friends ever since we were tiny tots," Tilly
answered, as casually as a school-girl chewing gum. "And even if--if he
really does love me and--and wants me to be his wife, should he be
blamed for that?"

The very suggestion of her marriage to any one, and that man in
particular, drove John wild. He bit his lip; he swore under his breath,
and his oaths had never been guarded before meeting Tilly; his eyes
flashed from the fires behind them. He clenched his fists.

"You are mine, mine, mine!" he said to himself with the grinding teeth
of a cave-man, and he was all but unaware that his words were not
audible. She was smiling up at him, so sweetly, so placidly. What a
nimbus of transcendental charm hovered over the wonderful face in the
moonlight. Suddenly he checked his onward stride, caught her, and drew
her around facing him. What he might have said or done he never knew,
but Tilly gravely started on again, gently extracting