"Really, Mr. Greenway," cried Katie, "you must have tried to do that; or have you been taking private lessons of Eleanor?" She stopped, her fine ear perhaps detecting something strained and hard in her own voice. I see her still as she looked then, poised like Mercury on one slender foot, one arm thrown back and holding her racket behind her head, framing it in, the little dimples quivering round her mouth, ready to melt into smiles at a word, while from under her dark eyelashes she shot out a long, bright look, half saucy defiance, half pleading for pardon. It was enough to madden any man who saw her, and it struck home to Riddell. Poor fellow! it was never aimed at him, and it fell short of its mark: "My heart's cold ashes vainly would she stir, The light was quenched she looked so lovely in." Eleanor, meanwhile, was bidding her usual good-by, nothing in her manner showing that she was at all offended. She need not be, for of course Katie could not seriously intend any slight to her, any more than to a stray tennis ball to which she might give a random hit. But I could not let a lady go home alone from my own ground in just this way, and I had a sort of fellow-feeling with her, which I wanted to show. "I will see Miss Beecher home, and then come back," I said, and hastened after her, although I had seen, by the prompt manner in which she had walked off, that she did not intend, and very likely did not wish, I should. I was glad to leave the ground and get away from them. I kept saying to myself that after all Katie was not much to blame; girls would be thoughtless, and Katie was so pretty and so petted that she might well be a little spoiled; and then I asked myself what right I had to set myself up as a judge of her conduct? None at all; only I wished that women, who can so easily and lightly touch on the raw places of others, would use their power to heal and not to wound. I could picture to myself some girl with an eagerness to share the overflowing gifts of fortune with others, a respectful tenderness for those who had but little, a yearning sweetness of sympathy that should disarm even envy, and give the very inequalities of life their fitness and significance. We men have rougher ways to hurt or heal; and though I tried desperately hard, I could not hit on anything pleasant or consolatory to say to Eleanor. She had got pretty well ahead of me, and was out of sight already. Her way home was by a long roundabout walk through our place, and then by a short one along the public road. When I turned into the winding, shady path which led through the thick barrier of trees hiding the Beecher wall, she was loitering slowly along before me; and though she quickened her pace when she heard me behind her, as a hint that I need not follow, I soon caught up with her, and then I was sorry I had tried to, for I saw that she was crying most undisguisedly and unbecomingly.