"we must go it alone. I won't be
dependent on any one."

"We could have a little apartment," her eyes were shining, "and Dad
would furnish it for us, and Susan Jenks could teach me to cook and she
could tell me your favorite things, and we'd have them, and it would be
like a story book. Barry, please."

He, too, thought it would be like a story book. Other people had done
such things and had been happy. And once at the head of his own
household he would show them that he was a man.

Yet he tried to put her away from him. "I must not. It wouldn't be
right."

But as the days went on, and the time before his departure grew short,
he began to ask himself, "Why not?"

And it was thus, with Romance in the lead, with Love urging them on,
and with Ignorance and Innocence and Impetuosity hand in hand, that, at
last, in the madness of a certain March moon, Leila and Barry ran away.

Leila had a friend in Rockville--an old school friend whom she often
visited. Barry knew Montgomery County from end to end. He had fished
and hunted in its streams, he had motored over its roads, he had danced
and dined at its country houses, he had golfed at its country clubs, he
had slept at its inns and worshiped in its churches.

So it was to Montgomery County and its county seat that they looked for
their Gretna Green, and one night Leila kissed her father wistfully,
and told him that she was going to see Elizabeth Dean.

"Just for Saturday, Dad. I'll go Friday night, and come back in time
for dinner Saturday."

"Why not motor out?"

"The train will be easier. And I'll telephone you when I get there."

She took chances on the telephoning--for had he called her up, he would
have found that she did not reach Rockville on Friday night, nor was
she expected by Elizabeth Dean until Saturday in time for lunch.

There was thus an evening and a night and the morning of the next day
in which Little-Lovely Leila was to be lost to the world.

She took the train for Rockville, but stopped at a station half-way
between that town and Washington, and there Barry met her. They had
dinner at the little station restaurant--a wonderful dinner of ham and
eggs and boiled potatoes, but the wonderfulness had nothing to do with
the food; it had to do rather with Little-Lovely Leila's shining eyes
and blushes, and Barry's abounding spirits. He was like a boy out of
school. He teased Leila and wrote poetry on the fly-specked dinner
card, readi