"You ought."

"Well, just this once."

"Sure, just this once." He linked his arm in hers.

"I--I--"

"Gee!" he said, "you're a girl after my own heart!"

On the Elevated train the windows were lowered to the first inrush of
spring, and when they left the city behind them came the first green
smells of open field and bursting bud.

"Now are you sorry you came, little Miss Miriam?"

She bared her head to the rush of breeze and he held her hat on his lap.
"Well, I should say not!"

"No crowds, just everything to ourselves."

"M-m-m-m! Smells like lilacs."

"We'll pick some."

"I--I ought to be home."

"Forget it!"

"Now, Mr. Shap-iro!" But her eyes continued to laugh and the straight
line of her mouth would quiver.

"Some eyes you've got, girlie! Some great big eyes! They nearly bowled
me over when you opened the door for me last night. Let me see your
eyes--what color are they, anyway?"

"Green."

They laughed without rhyme and without reason, and as if their hearts
were distilling joy. Then for a time they rode without speech and with
only the wind in their ears, and he watched the tendrils of her hair
blowing this way and that.

"Just think," she said, finally, "we land in Naples just four weeks from
to-day!"

"Hope the boat don't sail."

"You don't."

"Do!"

"If you aren't just the limit!"

"What'll I be doing while you're gallivanting round the country with
some Italian count?"

"I should worry."

"I better put a bee in Izzy's ear, and maybe he'll put another in your
father's, and the old gentleman will change his mind and won't go."

"Yes--he--will--not! When papa promises he sticks."

"Well, you don't know the nervy things I can do if I want. Nerve is my
middle name."

"You sure are some nervy."

"'Cheer up!' I always say to myself when a firm closes the front door on
me: 'Cheer up; there's always the back door and the fire-escape left.'
That's how I made my rep in shirtwaists--on nerve." He inclined to her
slightly across the car-seat. "You wouldn't close the front door on me,
would you, Miss Miriam?"

"Look, we get off here!"

"Would you?"

"N-no, silly."

Within the park new grass was soft as plush under their feet, and once
away from the winding asphalt of the main driveway the bosky heart of
a dell closed them in, and the green was suddenly dappled with shadow.
Here and there in the cool, damp spots violets lifted their heads and
pale wood-anemones, spring's fir