"I don't generally talk so much," she said hastily. "I like to think most—when I'm plowing, or working on the farm. I talk to my beau sometimes," she added, with a blush.
"You have a beau," said Monica, with a ready smile. "But of course you must have—with your pretty face."
"Oh, yes, and we're going to get married soon," Phyllis hurried on, basking once more in the other's smile. "His mamma's going to buy him a swell farm and start him right, and we're going to get married. Frank's awfully kind. He's—he's——"
"Frank? Frank—who?" Monica had no need of the information, but she was anxious to encourage the girl.
"Frank Burton. He's much bigger than me, and he thinks a heap. I just love him. I just love him so I don't know what I'd do if I hadn't got him. He's only a boy. We're the same age, and he's got the loveliest face."
"And when is he going to get this farm?"
"Soon. Quite soon. Then we'll be married. It's—it's good to love some one and feel they love you," Phyllis went on, almost abstractedly. "It makes you feel that you can work ever so. The days get short, and the nights shorter still. It makes the air all full of things that make you want to laugh, and sing, and be good to everything—even to spiders and—and bugs and things. Yes, it sets everything moving quick about you, and all the time it's just you, because you're full of happiness and looking forward. The only thing that's slow is the time between seeing him."
Monica smiled, and Phyllis laughed happily.
The mistress of Deep Willows could have sat on indefinitely talking and laughing with this frank, ingenious child, but she knew that, however reluctantly, she must tear herself away. Already the sun was high in the sky, and Phyllis had to reach home by noon, while she had her round to complete. So she lifted her reins, and her dozing broncho threw up its head alertly.
"I think you'll be very happy with your beau, Phyllis," she said, gently. "You would make any man happy. If this Frank Burton is all you say he is, and I'm sure he is, I fancy you'll live to see the day when you have quite lost your desire to say 'mam'—when you speak to me."