"If I could only be half as pretty as Sukey Yates," she often thought, little dreaming that Sukey, although a very pretty girl, was plain compared with her own winsome self. After the scrubbing she would take from a little box the solitary piece of grandeur she possessed,--a ribbon of fiery red,--and with this around her neck or woven through the waving floods of her black hair, she felt she was bedecked like a veritable queen of hearts. But the ribbon could not remove all doubts of herself, and with tears ready to start from her eyes she would stamp her foot and cry out: "I hate myself. I am an ugly fool." Then she would slowly climb down the rude stairway, and, as we humble folk would say, "take out her spite" against herself on poor Dic. She was not rude to him, but, despite her inclination, she failed to repay his friendliness in kind as of yore. Tom took great pleasure in teasing her, and chuckled with delight when his indulgent mother would tell her visiting friends that he was a great tease. One evening when Rita had encountered more trouble than usual with the sun-brown, and was more than ever before convinced that she was a fright and a fool, she went downstairs, wearing her ribbon, to greet Dic, who was sitting on the porch with father, mother, and Tom. When she emerged from the front door, Tom, the teaser, said:-- "Oh, just look at her! She's put on her ribbon for Dic." Then, turning to Dic, "She run to her room and spruced up when she saw you coming." Dic laughed because it pleased him to think, at least to hope, that Tom had spoken the truth. Poor Rita in the midst of her confusion misunderstood Dic's laughter; and, smarting from the truth of Tom's words, quickly retorted:-- "You're a fool to say such a thing, and if--if--if--Mr.--Mr. Bright believes it, he is as great a fool as you." "Mr. Bright!" cried de Triflin'. "My, but she's getting stylish!" Rita looked at Dic after she spoke, and the pain he felt was so easily discernible on his face that she would have given anything, even the ribbon, to have had her words back, or to have been able to cry out, "I didn't mean it, Dic; I didn't mean it." But the words she had spoken would not come back, and those she wanted to speak would not come forward, so tears came instead, and she ran to her loft, to do penance in sobs greatly disproportionate to her sin. Soon Dic left, and as he started up the forest path she tried by gazing at him from her window to make him know the remorse she felt. She wanted to call to him, but she dared not; then she thought to escape unseen from the house and run after him. But darkness was rapidly falling, and she feared the black, terrible forest. We talk a great deal about the real things of after life; but the real things of life, the keen joys and the keenest pains, come to a man before his first vote, and to a woman before the days of her mature womanhood. THE BACHELOR HEART CHAPTER II THE BACHELOR HEART