I shook the hand he offered me.
"Of course, we can't all be good looking," Sally remarked with a sigh, as if her misfortune were permanent.
Mr. Horace Dunkelberg and I laughed heartily—for I had told him in a whisper what had happened to Sally—while Mr. Latour looked a little embarrassed.
"My face is not beautiful, but they say that I have a good heart," Sally assured the stranger.
They started on. I excused myself and took a trail through the woods to another road. Just there, with Sally waving her hand to me as I stood for a moment in the edge of the woods, the curtain falls on this highly romantic period of my life.
Uncle Peabody came for me that evening. It was about the middle of the next week that I received this letter from Sally:
"DEAR BART—Mr. Latour gave up and drove to Potsdam in the evening. Said he had to meet Mr. Parish. I think that he had seen enough of me. I began to hope he would stay—he was so good looking, but mother is very glad that he went, and so am I, for our minister told us that he is one of the wickedest young men in the state. He is very rich and very bad, they say. I wonder if old Kate knew about him. Her charm worked well anyway—didn't it? My nose was all right in the morning. Sorry that I can't meet you Saturday. Mother and I are packing up to go away for the summer. Don't forget me. I shall be thinking every day of those lovely things you said to me. I don't know what they will try to do with me, and I don't care. I really think as you do, Bart, that God has married us to each other.
"Yours forever,
"SALLY DUNKELBERG."
How often I read those words—so like all the careless words of the young!