tell me," smiled the other. "And call me Carmencita."

"He is so brave, and patient, and good. I know there was never a man
like him."

Miss Carmencita thought of one and demurred silently. "I'm sure this
paragon of lovers is at least part of what you say. Does he love you?
But I am sure he couldn't help it."

"Sometimes I think he does, but once--" Frances broke off to ask, in a
pink flame: "How does a lover act?"

Miss Carmencita's laughter rippled up. "Gracious me, have you never had
one before."

"Never."

"Well, he should make verses to you and pretty speeches. He should sing
serenades about undying love under your window. Bonbons should bombard
you, roses make your rooms a bower. He should be ardent as Romeo,
devoted as a knight of old. These be the signs of a true love," she
laughed.

Frances' face fell. If these were the tokens of true love, her ranger
was none. For not one of the symptoms could fairly be said to fit him.
Perhaps, after all, she had given him what he did not want.

"Must he do all that? Must he make verses?" she asked blankly, not being
able to associate Bucky with poetasting.

"He must," teased her tormentor, running a saucy eye over her boyish
garb. "And why not with so fair a Rosalind for a subject?" She broke off
to quote in her pretty, uncertain English, acquired at a convent in the
United States, where she had attended school:

"From the east to western Ind,
No jewel is like Rosalind.
Her worth being mounted on the wind,
Through all the world bears Rosalind.

All the pictures, fairest lin'd,
Are but black to Rosalind.
Let no face be kept in mind
But the fair of Rosalind."

"So your Shakespeare has it, does he not?" she asked, reverting again to
the Spanish language, in which they had been talking. But swift on the
heels of her raillery came repentance. She caught the dispirited girl to
her embrace laughingly. "No, no, child! Nonsense ripples from my tongue.
These follies are but for a carpet lover. You shall tell me more of your
Senor Bucky and I shall make no sport of it."

When Bucky returned at the expiration of the time he had set himself, he
found them with their arms twined about each other's waists, whispering
the confidences that every girl on the threshold of womanhood has to
tell her dearest friend.

"I reckon you like my pardner better than you do me," smiled Bucky to
Miss Carmencita.

"A great deal better, sir, but then I know him better."