“That is no reason why you should have been so—so domineering and overbearing to me,” she broke out, with defiant eyes.
He looked intently at the tall green ferns growing in the masses of mossy stone by the road-side several minutes before he replied, quietly:
“I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”
“If—you—won’t—tell Aunt Thalia,” she replied, half entreatingly.
The violet orbs turned from contemplating the ferns to her face. The two pairs of eyes met.
“Did you really think I could tell tales?” he queried, gravely, and something in those eyes impelled her to answer:
“No.”
“Ah, I thought you would learn to trust me,” he said, with that wonderful smile whose sweetness dazzled Molly’s eyes. “Now let us pledge friendship, for the sake of—our families.”
She began to smile, her anger melting under his kindliness.
“I—I—won’t claim your friendship on the score of our families. If you promise me your friendship, it must be for what I am worth myself—and if I like you, it must be for yourself, not because you are a Laurens,” she replied, with such seriousness and earnestness that he laughed, and quoted: