“I beg you to believe that my pardon is fully and freely granted,” he replied, eagerly. “And now, may I hope that we shall be friends, Miss Jess?” and, emboldened by her forgiving mood, he caught the little brown hand that was hanging by her side ere she could know what he was about to do, and began kissing it rapturously. With an angry gesture Jess quickly drew her hand from his clasp. “You ask for my friendship,” she said, “that is quite another matter; you will have to deserve it. And I shall not know whether you are worthy of it until I know you better, and have learned your good traits, and your bad ones.” The young man laughed outright, highly amused. Was there ever such an original girl as this Jess? he asked himself. “I shall strive for it as man never strove for a girl’s friendship before,” he declared. “Now that I have removed your distrust--nay, even your hatred--I may hope to gain your good will--which is so much to me.” She looked at him in unfeigned astonishment. “Why should you care whether I like or hate you, Mr. Dinsmore?” she asked, looking straight into his face with her dark, childish eyes. Had he chosen to utter the truth he might have responded: “For two reasons: first, because I have taken a fancy to you; and second, because you must marry me, whether you will or not, that I may secure the Dinsmore fortune.” But he only responded, quietly: “Why should one wish for an enemy when that enemy can be made a friend of, Miss Jessie?” “Do not call me Jessie!” cried the girl; “I detest it. I am simply Jess--nothing but that.” “Jess, then,” he said, laughingly. “It shall be as the queen wills.” “I shall be sure not to like you if you go on making speeches like that!” declared the girl. “I don’t like queens, they are not my style; I have read all about them. I’d rather be a plain American girl than be the grandest queen in the world.” “You are enthusiastically patriotic,” he said, admiringly. “I quite honor you for that sentiment,” and he drew nearer, that he might look more closely into the beautiful face, whose expression varied with every passing thought. And Mrs. Bryson, watching them eagerly from behind the screening vines of the porch, said to herself that they were getting on famously together. It was a difficult matter, during the week which followed, to keep Jess within the prescribed bounds of civilization which Mrs. Bryson had laid out for her. But that the brown linsey dress was destroyed, literally torn to pieces before her very eyes, Jess would have donned it, and taken to her old life again, roaming barefooted through the woods and dales, with never a care.