"He did, did he!" Jack laughed; "Chi knows a thing or two."
"But I thought you 'd know more." Budd's face began to wear a puzzled look.
Just then Jack heard Rose's voice in the long-room asking where Mr. Sherrill was, and the sound brought home to him a realizing sense of the fact that there was but an hour before they left for the station, and every moment too precious to be wasted on Budd. Rising, and proceeding with his packing, he said with perfect seriousness:--
"Well, Budd, all I can say is, that if I were going to ask a girl to marry me, I should ask her if she thought enough of me to take me with all my imperfections and--"
"Where are you, Jack?" called Hazel, at the foot of the stairs; "Chi has to go an hour earlier than he said, and the sleigh is at the door."
In the hurry of Jack's good-byes and departure, the sentence was never finished, and the ring forgotten by him. But Budd remembered.
He was a sturdy little chap, broad of shoulder, strong of limb. His sandy red hair bristled straight up from his full forehead. His pale blue eyes, with thick reddish-brown lashes, were round and serious. His nose was a freckled pug, and his small mouth puckered, when he was very much in earnest, to the size of a buttonhole. From the time he had championed Hazel's coming to them, nearly a year ago, he had never wavered in his allegiance to her, and in his small-boy way showed her his entire devotion. Hazel had been so grateful to him for his whole-souled welcome of her, that she took pains to make his boy's heart happy in every way she could.
For Hazel, Budd was never in the way; never asked too many questions for her patience; never teased her beyond endurance. He found in her a ready listener, a good sympathizer, a capital playmate, and a loving girl-friend, who reproved him sometimes and, at others, praised him. What wonder that his ten-year-old heart had warmed towards her with its first boy-love? and that in his manly, practical way, he made of her an ideal?
"I love Hazel, and when I am big enough, I shall marry her," was what he said to himself whenever he stopped his play long enough to think about it at all. Naturally it seemed the wisest thing to tell her this when he should find the opportunity, and at the same time recall the fact.
Fortified by the testimony of Chi and Jack, he bided his time.