"I want to tell you something before we go on," he said, with a gravity that caused her to look at him sharply.
"Fred Holton, you and I are old friends now, and good pals. I hope you're not going to spoil it all."
"I love you, Phil; I can't help telling you: I have to tell you now."
She reached down, picked up a pebble and flung it at the star.
Assured, by the sound of its fall afar off in the corn, that it had missed Jupiter, she gave him her attention. He broke in before she could speak.
"I know there are reasons why I shouldn't tell you. I want you to know I have thought about them; I know that there are family reasons why—"
She laid her hand gently on his arm.
"Dear old Fred," she began, as a boy might have spoken to a comrade in trouble, "there's nothing about you that isn't altogether fine. The thing you were about to say you don't need to say—ever! If Amy didn't know you were one of the best fellows in the world, he wouldn't have got behind you when things were going wrong. He knew all those things that are in your mind and he didn't care, and you may be sure I don't. So that's all right, Fred."
His hope mounted as she spoke. The hand on his arm thrilled him. The fact that he was a Holton did not, then, make any difference, and he had been troubled about that ever since he realized how dear she had grown to him.
"You've all been mighty good to me. If it hadn't been for your father and Mr. Montgomery, I should have lost the farm. I'm better off than I ever expected to be and I owe it all to them. It's a big thing when a fellow's clear down and out to have helping hands like theirs. I don't know how to say these things, but I love you, Phil. You don't know what it has meant to know you—how thinking about you makes the day's work easier as I tramp these fields. I know I oughtn't to ask a girl like you to share a farmer's life, but I'll be so good to you, Phil! And I mean to go on and win. You've made the world a different place for me, Phil. I know what a poor clod I am, but I mean to study and to try and measure up to you."