here from miles around to get five cent’s worth of baking-sody and ask for a stick of candy. But take some; he won’t mind, for he’s always good to me.

She drew back her hand. “No,” she said, pouting; “I’m going to come in sometime when he’s hyar, an’ see if he’ll give some lagnappe to me.”

“I’ll tell him to,” the man said.

“Well, you are bigoty!” the girl repeated.

“If I was to tell him to,” the man persisted, “who should I say would ask for it?”

She looked at him defiantly. “I’ll do the telling,” she said; “but while we’re talking about names, what’s your’s?”

“Well,” he answered, “if you’re not naming any names, I don’t believe I am. You know considerably more about me already than I do about you.”

“Oh, just as you please,” she said. To be brought blankly against the fact that neither knew the other’s name caused a sense of constraint between them. She picked up her bonnet and put it on as if she might be about to go; and though she did not rise, she turned her face out-of-doors so that the bonnet hid it from him—and it was such a pretty face!

“Say, now,” he began, after one of those pauses in which lives sometimes sway restlessly to and fro in the balances of fate, “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I’ll tell my name if you want to know.”

“I’m not so anxious,” she said. One of her brown hands went up officiously and pulled the bonnet still farther forward. “Is it true,” she asked, “that Mr. Collister says he will marry any girl that can make good light bread?”

The man formed his lips as if to whistle, and then stopped.

“Yes,” he said, eyeing the sun-bonnet, “it’s true.”

She turned round and surprised him. “I can make good light bread,” she announced.

“You!” he said.

“Yes,” she answered sharply; “why not? It ain’t so great a trick.”

“But”—he paused, meeting the challenge of her face uneasily—“but did you come here to say that?”

“You’ve heard me say it,” she retorted.

He rose and stood beside her, looking neither at her, nor at the fields, nor at the encircling forest, but far over and beyond them all, at the first touches of rose-colour on the soft clouds in the west. He seemed very tall as she looked up at him, and his face was very grave. She had forgotten long ago to notice his bare feet and tattered clothing. “So that means,” he said slowly, “that you came here to offer to marry a man that you never saw.”

She did not answer for a moment, and when she did her voice was stubborn. “No,” she said; “I came hyar to say that I know how to make light bread. You needn’t be faultin’ me for his saying that he would marry any girl that could.”

“But you would marry him?”

“I allow if he was to ask me I would.”