appointed. Now, if
you like, along with your precious pie, you may carry him this message
from me. You may tell him that I said I am sorry!"

I could have cried "Glory!" and danced and shouted there in the road,
but I didn't. It was no time to lose my head. That was all so fine
and splendid, as far as it went, but it didn't quite cover the case. I
never could have done it for myself; but for Laddie I would venture
anything, so I looked her in the eyes, straight as a dart, and said:
"He'd want the kiss too, Princess!"

You could see her stiffen in the saddle and her fingers grip the reins,
but I kept on staring right into her eyes.

"I could come up, you know," I offered.

A dull red flamed in her cheeks and her lips closed tight. One second
she sat very still, then a dancing light leaped sparkling into her
eyes; a flock of dimples chased each other around her lips like
swallows circling their homing place at twilight.

"What about that wonderful pie?" she asked me.

I ran to the nearest fence corner, and laid the shingle on the gnarled
roots of a Johnny Appleseed apple tree. Then I set one foot on the
arch of the Princess' instep and held up my hands. One second I
thought she would not lift me, the next I was on her level and her lips
met mine in a touch like velvet woven from threads of flame. Then with
a turn of her stout little wrist, she dropped me, and a streak went up
our road. Nothing so amazing and so important ever had happened to me.
It was an occasion that demanded something unusual. To cry, "Praise
the Lord!" was only to repeat an hourly phrase at our house; this
demanded something out of the ordinary, so I said just exactly as
father did the day the brown mare balked with the last load of seed
clover, when a big storm was breaking--"Jupiter Ammon!"

When I had calmed down so I could, I climbed the fence, and reached
through a crack for the pie. As I followed the cool, damp furrow, and
Laddie's whistle, clear as the lark's above the wheat, thrilled me, I
was almost insane with joy. Just joy! Pure joy! Oh what a good world
it was!--most of the time! Most of the time! Of course, there WERE
Paget men in it. But anyway, THIS couldn't be beaten. I had a message
for Laddie from the Princess that would send him to the seventh heaven,
wherever that was; no one at our house spent any time thinking farther
than the first one. I had her kiss, that I didn't know what would do
to him, and I al