"Oh, but I am the one to whom the good fortune has really come," replied Dic. "You are so generous that you give me yourself, and that is the richest present on earth." "Ah, but you are so generous that you take me. I cannot understand it all yet; I suppose I shall in time. But what have you brought that will make me know it is all real?" Dic then brought forth the ivory box and held it behind him. "Oh, what is it?" cried the girl, eagerly. "Give me your hand," commanded Dic. The hand was promptly surrendered. "Now close your eyes," he continued. The eyes were closed, very, very honestly. Rita knew no other way of doing anything, and never so much as thought of peeping. Then Dic lifted the soft little hand to his lips, and slipped the gold band on the third finger. "Oh, I know what it is now," she cried delightedly, but she would not look till Dic should say "open." "Open" was said, and the girl exclaimed:-- "Oh, Dic, where did you get it?" Bear this fact in mind: If you live among the trees, the wild flowers, and the birds, you will always remain a child. Rita was little more than a child in years, and I know you will love Dic better because within his man's heart was still the heart of his childhood. The great oak of the forest year by year takes on its encircling layer of wood, but the layers of a century still enclose the heart of a sprig that burst forth upon a spring morning from its mother acorn. For a moment after Rita asked Dic where he got the ring he regretted he had not bought it, but he said:-- "Billy Little gave it to me that I might give it to you; so it really is his present." A shade of disappointment spread over her face, but it lasted only a moment. "But you give it to me," she said. "It was really yours, and you give it to me. I am almost glad it comes from Billy Little. He has been so much to me. You are by nature different from other men, but the best difference we owe to Billy Little." The pronoun "we" was significant. It meant that she also was Billy Little's debtor for the good he had brought to Dic, since now that wonderful young man belonged to her. "I wonder where he got it?" asked the girl. "I don't know," replied Dic. "He said he valued it above all else he possessed, and told me it had brought him his sweetest joy and his bitterest grief. I think he gave it to a sweetheart long years ago, and she was compelled to return it and to marry another man. I am only guessing. I don't know." "Perhaps we had better not keep it," returned the girl, with a touch of her forest-life superstition. "It might bring the same fate to us. I could not bear it, Dic, now. I should die. Before you spoke to me--before that night of Scott's social--it would have been hard enough for me to--to--but now, Dic, I couldn't bear to lose you, nor to marry another. I could not; indeed, I could not. Let us not keep the ring." Dic's ardor concerning the ring was dampened, but he said:--