“You’re the only one she needs shielding _from_, Mr. Irving.” Betsy spoke with slow, gentle emphasis. “I tell Rosalie to be mejum, but she don’t know _how_. It isn’t in her. I’d feel meaner’n pusley to say this to you, if ’twan’t meaner not to. She’s set you up, the way a girl will, in a special niche of her heart. How she come to I can’t see, ’cause she never talked with you more’n once or twice. She don’t know that I notice this, but she’s shown it a number o’ times the last two days. Now she hasn’t had a chance yet to know men worth knowin’; and if you happen to meet her anywhere, and just treat her pleasant but real formal, she’ll get over this fancy—it’s all just a part of her poetry and the notions she lives among all the time, in her own thoughts. It don’t amount to anything, now; but it could if you acted selfish. I told you before that I love her, Mr. Irving. She hasn’t got a person to take care of her but me. I’m glad she’s a girl all out o’ the question for you, because Mrs. Bruce would never think she was good enough, and would make her unhappy; and as long as she _is_ out o’ the question I ain’t afraid to ask the son o’ your father and mother, the two finest people I ever knew in my life, to keep away from her; not flatter her; not show her any attention. She’s as modest as a daisy, and got no more worldly experience than one. Lots o’ men admire that kind a little while, and then tread on it without even noticin’ that they have.” Irving during this speech had sunk his hands in his pockets, and his eyes were fixed on his outstretched pumps. Betsy regarded him anxiously through a moment of silence. “Do you ever wish we were back in the canyon?” he asked. “I do.” “Mr. Irving!” she ejaculated. “I don’t believe you’ve heard a word I’ve been saying.” “I have; but I doubt most of it. You’re in love with me yourself, Betsy. That’s what’s the matter with you.” “H’m. Perhaps I might be if I could forget how cross you were when you were teethin’ and how you tore your clothes, and got all stuck up with jam. Your mother trusted me perfectly. Whenever I carried you to her and said, ‘Please spank him, ma’am,’ she always did it without a question.” Betsy’s tone was vainglorious. Irving threw back his head, and his ringing laugh caused Mrs. Bruce to look wonderingly down the garden. “An absolute monarchy, eh?” he responded. “And you have the habit so, you want to tyrannize over me still?” “Don’t leave me with the feelin’ that you want to shirk out of it by foolin’,” pursued Betsy, refusing to smile, and rising, conscious of Mrs. Bruce’s gaze. Irving rose also and threw his arm tenderly around her thin shoulders as they moved toward the house. She tried to escape, but the gentle vise held. “You’ve made me feel very sentimental, referring as you have to our past, Betsy,” he said emotionally. “Know’st thou these verses, beginning—