"Yes," demurely answered Hazel.
Just then from a near-by hillside came the tattoo welcome of a cock partridge "drumming" for his mate, the measured, gradually increasing roar making the woods resound as Mr. Grouse beat the hollow log upon which he strutted up and down until his coquettish spouse approached within sight of her liege lord. She came, pecking negligently at snails and bugs, missing them oftener than hitting them, but she didn't care. She scratched at imaginary seeds, inattentively awaiting his pleasure. As soon as the cock perceived his bride he spread his tail like a fan, clucked a welcome and flew to her side.
"There, my dear," said Jack; "that is the way you must obey me when I am lord and master. Be very meek and let me do the splurging."
"And don't I get a chance to say a teeny, weensy word? Have I just got to listen, and watch the man of the house dry the dishes, get the breakfast (if we can't have a domestic) and"—Hazel rolled her eyes mockingly meek and with her hands "Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep" fashion, continued, "match samples for me at the store?" Jack capitulated; his grandeur collapsed "all at once and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst." Two merry peals of laughter echoed through the pine-scented woods.
"Sh! Jack, it is Sunday. I forgot all about it, and we must go home. Papa will wonder where I am," and a little red spot burned on each cheek as she surmized what "papa" would say when he found out that the young man from Boston "proposed to splurge."
But Jack's splurging was all make-believe. In the shadowy recesses of the great elms, as they retraced their steps toward the Hemmingway mansion, a manly arm stole about the waist of the lithesome girl, whose demure "yes" had to be sealed in order to make it real. Mr. Hemmingway was in the library as they entered the house. Jack nudged Hazel at the portentously contracted brows of papa and the stern look of inquiry which followed. Hazel quickly stepped into the hall, leaving Jack alone.
"Papa, Jack—Mr. Sheppard—wants to speak to you a moment," then she flew past the meekest man that ever tried to splurge.
"Mr. Hemmingway"—Jack got that far and it seemed as though every whisker in that stern face became a bristling bayonet. "I think you must be able to guess my mission."
"What? No—no. Jack, you—why, you are but a boy, and Hazel"—A softer, kindlier expression crept slowly into the face of the man whose only daughter he suddenly realized had become a woman. "Jack, I moved here to keep my child—to get her away from the—from the—it is no use, though. I guess you will be good to her. Let me see, you are the boy who got such an awful whipping once because you would not be a tell-tale, and a boy that has that kind of grit, I guess, is the right stuff to be my son-in-law. Hazel"—
The stern old man went out upon the lawn as Hazel re-entered the library. A noise as of some one vigorously using a handkerchief broke the stillness, but even then the old man chuckled as he saw two figures silhouetted upon the curtain. "Celebrating my consent, I guess," he soliloquized.