“Well, I should have been up anyway,” replied Betty, frankly. “This is the loveliest part of the day, you know. The world looks so fresh with the first frost over it—only the poor silly summer flowers take cold and die.”
“If you weren't a rose, you'd take cold yourself,” remarked Dan, pointing, with his riding-whip, to the hem of her dimity skirt. “Don't stand in the grass like that, you make me shiver.”
“Oh, the sun will dry me,” she laughed, stepping from the path to the bare earth of the rose bed. “Why, when you get well into the sunshine it feels like summer.” She talked on merrily, and he, paying small heed to what she said, kept his ardent look upon her face. His joy was in her bright presence, in the beauty of her smile, in the kind eyes that shone upon him. Speech meant so little when he could put out his arm and touch her if he dared.
“I am going away in an hour, Betty,” he said, at last.
“But you will be back again at Christmas.”
“At Christmas! Heavens alive! You speak as if it were to-morrow.”
“Oh, but time goes very quickly, you know.”
Dan shook his head impatiently. “I dare say it does with you,” he returned, irritably, “but it wouldn't if you were as much in love as I am.”
“Why, you ought to be used to it by now,” urged Betty, mercilessly. “You were in love last year, I remember.”
“Betty, don't punish me for what I couldn't help. You know I love you.”