elf with difficulty on the opposite side of the gate from
him. "The city fathers will have to capitulate, and now for the reign of
the mothers!"

"And the same old route to subjection chosen, through their stomachs to
their civic hearts," I answered impudently.

Overlooking my pertness he went on:

"Mayor Shelby was at home with Mrs. Augusta for two hours after dinner
and, as I came by the post-office, I heard him telling Polk in
remarkably chastened, if not entirely chaste language, that it was
'better to let the women have their kick-up on a feeding proposition
than on something worse,' as he classically put it."

"I know it is a great victory," I answered weakly, "but I'm too tired to
glory in it. I wish I was Sallie's Puppy being trotted across Aunt
Dilsie's knee, or Kit, getting a rocking in Cousin Martha's arms."

"Would any other arms do for the rocking?" came in a queer, audacious
voice, with a note in it that stilled something in me and made all the
world seem to be holding its breath.

"I'm tired of revoluting and it's--it's tenderness I want," I faltered
in a voice that hardly seemed strong enough to get so far up out of my
heart as to reach the ears of the Crag as he bent his head down close
over mine. He had come on my side of the gate at the first weak little
cry I had let myself make a minute or two before.

[Illustration: "Is this right?" he asked]

"Is this right?" he asked, as he gently took me in his arms, hollowed
his shoulder for a place for my head, and leaning against the old
gate he began to swing me gently to and fro, his cheek against my hair
and humming Aunt Dilsie's

"Swing low sweet chariot, fer to carry me home."

It was.

I know now what I want and I am going to have it. I'll fight the whole
world with naked hands for him. And I'm also going to find some way to
get him with all his absurd niceties of honor intact, just because that
will make him happier.

I'll begin at the beginning and some way unclasp those gourdy tendrils
that Sallie has been strangling him with. I will bunch all the rest of
his feminine collection and take them on my own hands. I'm going to make
a Governor out of him, and then a United States Senator and finally a
Supreme Judge. Help! Think of the old Mossback being a progressive, but
that's my party and Jane's.

I know he is going to hate terribly to have me ask him to marry me, and
I hate to hurt him so, but it is my duty to get Jane's fifty thousand