d."

"I have one on now," she answered, with apparent seriousness, "only you
can't see it under my ribbon. It's getting dry and I think I'd better
hurry home to wet it again, don't you?"

Winfield laughed joyously. "You'll do," he said.

Before they were half up the hill, they were on good terms again. "I
don't want to go home, do you?" he asked.

"Home? I have no home--I'm only a poor working girl."

"Oh, what would this be with music! I can see it now! Ladies and
gentlemen, with your kind permission, I will endeavour to give you a
little song of my own composition, entitled:'Why Has the Working Girl No
Home!'"

"You haven't my permission, and you're a wretch."

"I am," he admitted, cheerfully, "moreover, I'm a worm in the dust."

"I don't like worms."

"Then you'll have to learn."

Ruth resented his calm assumption of mastery. "You're dreadfully young,"
she said; "do you think you'll ever grow up?"

"Huh!" returned Winfield, boyishly, "I'm most thirty."

"Really? I shouldn't have thought you were of age."

"Here's a side path, Miss Thorne," he said, abruptly, "that seems to
go down into the woods. Shall we explore? It won't be dark for an hour
yet."

They descended with some difficulty, since the way was not cleat, and
came into the woods at a point not far from the log across the path. "We
mustn't sit there any more," he observed, "or we'll fight. That's where
we were the other day, when you attempted to assassinate me."

"I didn't!" exclaimed Ruth indignantly.

"That rag does seem to be pretty dry," he said, apparently to himself.
"Perhaps, when we get to the sad sea, we can wet it, and so insure
comparative calm."

She laughed, reluctantly. The path led around the hill and down from the
highlands to a narrow ledge of beach that lay under the cliff. "Do you
want to drown me?" she asked. "It looks very much as if you intended to,
for this ledge is covered at high tide."

"You wrong me, Miss Thorne; I have never drowned anything."

His answer was lost upon her, for she stood on the beach, under the
cliff, looking at the water. The shimmering turquoise blue was slowly
changing to grey, and a single sea gull circled overhead.

He made two or three observations, to which Ruth paid no attention.
"My Lady Disdain," he said, with assumed anxiety, "don't you think we'd
better go on? I don't know what time the tide comes in, and I never
could look your aunt in the face if I had drowned her only relati