His laughing eyes looked down at her. She shook her head. "If I came up the tree I should prove that I am still a girl. If I am still a girl—"
"Are you still a girl? Is that still your greatest desire?" He leaned forward, and the smile suddenly left his lips. His eyes searched hers.
The face she bravely lifted to him was a girl's for youthful beauty, but into it had come something very sweet and womanly, which at last gave him the leave he had waited so long for. "No—I think I've grown up." she said, quite clearly.
With an exclamation, the sinewy figure in the tree made short work of the ten feet to the ground, swinging itself off from the limb by both hands and dropping lightly down.
"I don't think I could have waited a day longer," said Jarvis Burnside. Then, with the sheltering trunk of the great oak shutting off all possible vision from the far distant house, he drew Sally Lane into his eager arms.
* * * * *
"Why so late?" Maxwell Lane looked up to ask, as his sister Sally came somewhat hurriedly in to dinner, when the rest of the household were half through.
"Please excuse my pink gingham," apologized Sally, as she dropped into her chair. She glanced from Mrs. Burnside in cool white to Josephine in crisp blue.
"Nothing could be more becoming," Josephine asserted, always ready to defend her friend.
"There's a strawberry stain on her right sleeve," Bob pointed out.