s.

"Oh! Oh!" she cried hysterically, "don't send her away--don't,
Frank! L-let me have somebody!"

"There, you see!" said Luella sadly, "you see how 'tis, Mr. Wortley.
Do you mean to say you have the heart--"

"Dorothy, I don't understand you at all," said the young man, with
evident self restraint.

"You probably do not realize the very trying position you put me in.
I hope it is not necessary to explain to you, Mrs. Judd, that if
Miss Hartley _wishes_ to marry me, she has but to say the word, and
it shall be done instantly--instantly!" he repeated with emphasis,
"as if," Luella said later, "he'd had a minister in his side
pocket."

"There, my dear, hear that!" she cried triumphantly, "now just tell
him what you want--"

"You horrid woman, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" the girl
broke in furiously. "How dare you intimate--as if I didn't know that
Frank would do anything in the world I asked him to!"

"Oh, no, dearest," he broke in satirically, "that's a poor basis for
action in this beautiful world of ours! Catch your man and tie him
tight before he has time to change his mind. Then he'll be obliged
to stay by you--you've got him hand and foot! That is love!"

"It's just as well, sometimes, though," Luella inserted placidly.

"Do you suppose I would ever," the girl stormed, "unless I--oh,
dear, will somebody understand? Don't you know that my--that Frank
has studied this question very deeply, that it's a matter of
principle with us? If you had read all the dreadful things--"

"I am afraid, darling," he interrupted, with cold dignity, "that
if your people and mine cannot understand the position I take,
if we are actually obliged to take the matter into our own hands,
and--and run away, in fact, in order to prove our sincerity, you
can hardly expect people of a different--of less--with fewer--"

"I know what you mean, Mr. Wortley," Luella said gravely. She
rose to her feet, beckoning to Caroline, whose waist the girl
still clasped.

"I haven't got your education," she went on, with a simple humility
that became her very touchingly, "we're poor people up here, us
'natives,' and we don't get much time for books, or when we do,
we're too tired to read 'em much. I don't doubt you've been to
college, yourself, and you've prob'ly learnt a lot about the
mistakes that's been made in the world--a lot that I wouldn't
understand. But I want to tell you one thing. I'm old enough to 'a
been your mother, Mr. W