he flowering currants made a scented wall, and in
the midst the lilac bushes grow up into a cavern of delicately tinted,
constantly tremulous shade.

I told her of my fears, whereat she scorned them and me, bidding me go
forward bravely.

"I have never promised to be anybody's friend before," she said; "I
shall not break my word!"

"But, Irma," I urged, for indeed I could not keep the words back, they
being on the tip of my tongue, "what if in the meantime, when I am away
so far and seeing you so little, you should promise somebody else to be
more than a friend!"

She stood a moment with the severe look I had grown to fear upon her
face. Then she smiled at me, at once amused and forgiving.

"You are a silly boy," she said; "but after all, you are but a boy. You
will learn that I do not say one thing one day and another the next.
There--I promised you a guerdon, did I not? That is the picture of my
mother. You can open the back if you like!"

I set my thumb-nail to it, and there, freshly cut and tied with a piece
of the very blue ribbon she was wearing, lay a lock of her hair, a curl
curiously and as it seemed wilfully twisted back upon itself, as if it
had refused to be so imprisoned--just, in fact, like Irma herself.

I should have kissed her hand if I had known how, but instead I kissed
the lock of hair. When I looked up I am afraid that there was most
unknightly water in my eyes.

"Come," she said, "this will never do. There must be none of that if you
are to carry Irma Sobieski's pledge. Stand up--smile--ah, that is
better. Look at me as if I were Lalor Maitland himself, rather than cry
about it. You have my pledge, have you not--signed, sealed, and
delivered? There!"

But how the legal formula was carried out by Miss Irma is nobody's
business except our own--hers and mine, I mean. But at all events I went
forth from the lilac clump by the well, and picked up my full water cans
with a heart wondrously strengthened, and so up the path to Heathknowes
with a back straight as a ramrod, because of the eyes that I knew were
watching me through the chinks in the wall of summer blossom.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE COLLEGE OF KING JAMES

I arrived at Edinburgh with the most astonishing ache in my heart (or,
at least, in the parts adjoining), and had I met with the least
pitifulness I think I should have broken down entirely. But I found a
very necessary stimulus in the details of the examination for the
bursar