"Amy, Amy," said Burt, in a low, desperate tone, "think how few short months have passed since I told you I loved you, and protested I would wait till I was gray. You have seen me giving my thoughts to another, and in your mind you expect to see me carried away by a half-dozen more. You are mistaken, but it will take a long time to prove it."
"No, Burt, I understand you better than you think. Gertrude has inspired in you a very different feeling from the one you had for me. I think you are loving now with a man's love, and won't get over it very soon, if you ever do. You have seen, you must have felt, that my love for you was only that of a sister, and of course you soon began to feel toward me in the same way. I don't believe I would have married you had you waited an age. Don't fret, I'm not going to break my heart about you."
"I should think not, nor will any one else. Oh, Amy, I so despised myself that I have been half-desperate."
"Despised yourself because you love a girl like Gertrude Hargrove! I never knew a man to do a more natural and sensible thing, whether she gave you encouragement or not. If I were a man I would make love to her, rest assured, and she would have to refuse me more than once to be rid of me."
Burt took a long breath of immense relief. "You are heavenly kind," he said. "Are you sure you won't despise me? I could not bear that. It seems to me that I have done such an awfully mean thing in making love to you in my own home, and then in changing."
Her laugh rang out merrily. "Fate has been too strong for you, and I think—I mean—I hope, it has been kind. Bless you, Burt, I could never get up any such feeling as sways you. I should always be disappointing, and you would have found out, sooner or later, that your best chance would be to discover some one more responsive. Since you have been so frank, I'll be so too. I was scarcely more ready for your words last spring than Johnnie, but I was simple enough to think that in half a dozen years or so we might be married if all thought it was best, and my pride was a little hurt when I saw what—what—well, Gertrude's influence over you. But I've grown much older the last few months, and know now that my thoughts were those of a child. My feeling for you is simply that of a sister, and I don't believe it would ever have changed. Who knows? I might eventually have an acute attack also, and then I should be in a worse predicament than yours."
"But you will be my loving sister as long as you live, Amy? You will believe that I have a little manhood if given a chance to show it?"
"I believe it now, Burt, and I can make you a hundredfold better sister than wife. The idea! It seems but the other day I was playing with dolls. Here, now, cheer up. You have judged yourself too harshly;" and she looked at him so smilingly and affectionately that he took her in his arms and kissed her again and again, exclaiming, "You can count on one brother to the last drop of his blood. Oh, Amy, whatever happens now, I won't lose courage. Miss Hargrove will have to say no a dozen times before she is through with me."
At this moment Webb, from the top of a tall ladder in the orchard, happened to glance that way, and saw the embrace. He instantly descended, threw down his basket of apples, and with it all hope. Burt had won Amy at last. The coolness between them had been but a misunderstanding, which apparently had been banished most decidedly. He mechanically took down his ladder and placed it on the ground, then went to his room to prepare for supper.
"Burt," cried Amy, when they were half-way home, "you have forgotten your horse."