"But won't you ever marry?" pursued Carlotta with youth's insistence on probing wounds to the quick.
"I don't know. Probably," he added honestly. "A man is a poor stick in this world without a home and kiddies. If I do it will be a long time yet though. It will be many a year before I see anybody but you, no matter where I look."
"But I am horrid—selfish, cowardly, altogether horrid."
"Are you?" smiled Phil. "I wonder. Anyway I love you. Come on, dear.
We'll have to hurry. The car is nearly due."
And, as twilight settled down over the valley like a great bird brooding over its nest, Philip and Carlotta went down from the mountain.
CHAPTER IV
A BOY WHO WASN'T AN ASS BUT BEHAVED LIKE ONE
Baccalaureate services being over and the graduates duly exhorted to the wisdom of the ages, the latter were for a time permitted to alight from their lofty pedestal in the public eye and to revert temporarily to the comfortable if less exalted state of being plain every day human girls.
While Philip and Carlotta went up on the heights fondly believing they were settling their destinies forever, Tony had been enjoying an afternoon en famille with her uncle and her brother Ted.
Suddenly she looked at her watch and sprang up from the arm of her uncle's chair on which she had been perched, chattering and content, for a couple of hours.