A Lover and His Lass

room. That is the way they always pun- ished me when I was a little girl. And once, not so very long ago, when I was a big girl, they did it.”

“ If they do I’ll get you out somehow,” said Eric, laughing a little.

She allowed herself to smile, but it was a rather forlorn little effort. She did not cry any more, but her spirits did not come back to her. Eric talked gaily, but she only listened in a pensive, absent way, as if she scarcely heard him. When he asked her to play she shook her head.

“ I cannot think any music to—night,” she wrote. “ I must go home, for my head aches and I feel very stupid.”

“ Very well, Kilmeny. Now, don’t worry, little girl. It will all come out all right.”

Evidently she did not share his confi- dence, for her head drooped again as they walked together across the orchard. At the entrance of the wild cherry lane she paused and looked at him half reproach-

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