. I thanked
her, and said that the best thing we could do was to take counsel
together. Which we did there under the shelter of the great holly-bush.
So much so that any one passing that way might have taken us for foolish
lovers, instead of two people plotting how to get rid the one of the
other.

What helped the illusion greatly was that it was a cold day, with every
now and then a few driving flecks of snow. I had on a great rough
Inverness cloak of my father's, far too large for me. I asked Charlotte
if she were warm. She said she was, but did not persist too much in the
statement. So we left Tom Gallaberry out of the question, and set
ourselves to arrange what we were to say to our two fathers.

"It will be terrible hard to pretend!" I said, shaking my head.

"It will be a sin--at least, for long!" she answered.

I exposed the situation. There was to be no immediate talk of marriage.
Even her father had allowed that I must get through college first. He
was to pay my fees as a doctor. I did not want to be a doctor. Besides,
I could not take her father's money----

Here Charlotte turned with so quick a flounce that she nearly landed
herself in the little gutter which I had made with my stick to carry off
the drainage of the slope behind.

"Not take the money? Nonsense!" she cried. "Father has more than he
knows what to do with!"

She paused a while, finger on lip, meditating, the double ply of
calculation, stamped on her father's brow, very strongly marked on hers.

"Look here, Duncan," she said caressingly, like a grown woman wooing to
get her own way, so deep her voice was, "daddy is giving you that money
because you are going to marry me, isn't he?"

I signed, as well as I could, that Mr. Robert Anderson of Birkenbog
considered himself as so doing.

She clapped her hands and cried out, as if she had stumbled on the
solution of some exceedingly difficult problem, "Why, then, take the
money and give it to Tom! He needs it for his farm--oh, just dreadful.
He says the hill is not half stocked, and that a hundred or two more
ewes would just be the saving of him!"

"But," said I, "I shall be entering into an agreement with your father,
and shall have to give him receipts!"

"Well," she continued boldly, "Thomas will enter into an agreement with
you, if he doesn't marry me--that is, if I am left on your hands--he
will pay you the money back--or else give you the sheep!"

It will hardly be believed the dif