There was again something strange in her manner as she turned suddenly from him, and what it meant he was soon to learn. It was the last week of school and Hale had just come down from the woods behind the school-house at “little recess-time” in the afternoon. The children were playing games outside the gate, and Bob and Miss Anne and the little Professor were leaning on the fence watching them. The little man raised his hand to halt Hale on the plank sidewalk.
“I've been wanting to see you,” he said in his dreamy, abstracted way. “You prophesied, you know, that I should be proud of your little protege some day, and I am indeed. She is the most remarkable pupil I've yet seen here, and I have about come to the conclusion that there is no quicker native intelligence in our country than you shall find in the children of these mountaineers and—”
Miss Anne was gazing at the children with an expression that turned Hale's eyes that way, and the Professor checked his harangue. Something had happened. They had been playing “Ring Around the Rosy” and June had been caught. She stood scarlet and tense and the cry was:
“Who's your beau—who's your beau?”
And still she stood with tight lips—flushing.
“You got to tell—you got to tell!”
The mountain boy, Cal Heaton, was grinning with fatuous consciousness, and even Bob put his hands in his pockets and took on an uneasy smile.
“Who's your beau?” came the chorus again.
The lips opened almost in a whisper, but all could hear:
“Jack!”