The Girl and Her Fortune. Meade L. T.

lining a swish. After a minute’s thought, Brenda said —

      “We have known you, Michael, for four years.” And then she related in a gentle but penetrating voice the occasion of their first meeting. “Florence was,” she said, “fourteen at the time. She is eighteen now. You pulled her hair: you were a very rough boy indeed, and you made Flo cry.”

      “No, that he didn’t!” interrupted Florence. “He put me into a towering passion.”

      “Yes,” pursued Brenda, “and you cried while you were in the passion.”

      “I don’t know how to apologise,” said the somewhat discomfited lieutenant: “but I suppose boys will be boys.”

      “And girls will be girls,” said Florence. “You would not pull my hair now, would you?”

      He looked at her lovely hair, arranged in the most becoming fashion and yet so simply, and murmured something which she could not quite catch but which caused her ears to tingle, for she was quite unaccustomed to compliments except among her school-fellows, and they did not count.

      After dinner, the pair found themselves alone for a few minutes. Then Reid drew a chair close to Florence’s side, and said —

      “I wish with all my heart and soul that you were as poor as a church mouse, so that I might show you what a man’s devotion can do for a girl.”

      Florence found herself turning pale – not at the latter part of his speech but at the beginning; for was she not quite as poor as a church mouse? in fact, poorer, for even the church mouse manages to exist; and she could not exist beyond quite a limited time on the small amount of money which the girls possessed between them.