swore pa out of a big whiskey scrape in Atlanta,
and since then pa and him has been mighty thick. They thought all
along that Toot wanted to marry me, and it made 'em mighty proud, and
then it began to look like he was settin' up to you. That's why I quit
staying here, Harriet. I couldn't be around you so much and know--or
think, as I did, that he was beginning to love you."

"I don't think," protested Harriet, "that he was ever deeply interested
in me. You must not think that. In fact, I believe now, Hettie, that
you and he will be happily married some day--if he ever gets out of his
trouble."

Hettie drew in her breath quickly and held it, raising a glad glance to
the speaker's face.

"Why do you think so, Harriet?--oh, you are just saying this to make me
feel better."

Harriet deliberated for a moment, then she said: "He was here the night
they run him off--the night they all took Mr. Westerfelt out. Mother
and I had a long talk with him. Mother talked straight to him about
flirting with you, and told him what a good, nice girl you were, and--"

"Oh, did she, Harriet? I could hug her for it!"

"Yes, and he talked real nice about you, too, and admitted he had acted
wrong. Hettie, I believe in time that he'll come back and ask you to
marry him. I believe that in the bottom of my heart."

The countenance of the visitor was now aglow with hope.

"Maybe he will--maybe he will," she said. "I was afraid I let him see
too plain that I was a fool about him, but some men like that, I
reckon; he always seemed to come oftener. Harriet, one thing has
worried the life nearly out of me. I heard Frank Hansard say a young
man never would think as much of a girl after she let him kiss her.
I'm no hypocrite--I'm anything else; but as much as I'd love to have a
young man I cared for kiss me, I'd die in my tracks before I'd let 'im
put his arm around me if I thought it would make 'im think less of me.
Do you reckon" (she was avoiding Harriet's eyes)--"do you think that
would make any difference with Toot--I mean, with any young man?"

Harriet smiled in spite of the look of gravity in Hettie's eyes.

"Some men might be that way," she finally said, consolingly--she was
thinking of the innate coarseness of Hettie's lover--"but I don't think
Mr. Wambush is. That was one of the first things my mother ever taught
me. She told me she'd learned it by experience when she was a girl. I
don't pretend to be better than ot