“Is he ever kiss you yet?” asked the child.
“I heard that you and Jimmy whipped Ed Brown because he imitated your own particular whistle. Did you?”
“How many times is he kiss you?” asked Billy.
The young girl put her arm around him and tried to nestle his little body against her own.
“I'm too big, anyway, for your real sweetheart,” she said. “Why, by the time you are large enough to marry I should be an old maid. You must have Frances or Lina for your sweetheart.”
“An' let you have Maurice!” he sneered.
She stooped to lay her flushed cheek against his own.
“Honey,” she softly said, “Maurice and I are going to be married soon; I love him very much and I want you to love him too.”
He pushed her roughly from him.
“An' you jes' 'ceived me all the time,” he cried, “an' me a-lovin' you better 'n anybody I ever see sence I's born? An' you a Sunday-School teacher? I ain't never a-goin' to trus' nobody no mo'. Good-bye, Miss Cecilia.”