Mabel said she was sure that Kittie was crazy, and next she thought George was crazy, too. For he bent and stared hard into Kittie's eyes for a minute, and then he began to laugh, and he laughed till he cried. He tried to speak, but he couldn't at first; and when he did the words came out between his shouts of boyish glee. "Do you mean to say, you young monkey," he said, "that this is a put-up job?" Kittie nodded as solemnly as a fair young girl can nod when her clothes are dripping and her nose is blue with cold. When she did that, George roared again; then, as if he had remembered something, he caught her hands and began to skate very fast toward the club-house. He was a thoughtful young man, you see, and he wanted her to get warm. Perhaps he wanted to get warm, too. Anyhow, they started off, and as they went, Kittie opened still further the closed flower of her girlish heart. I heard that expression once, and I've always wanted to get it into one of my stories. I think this is a good place. She told George she knew the hole in the ice, and that it wasn't deep; and she said she had done it all to make Josephine admire him and marry him. "She will, too," she said. "Her dear little sister--the only one she's got." And Kittie went on to say what a terrible thing it would have been if she had died in the promise of her young life, till Mabel said she almost felt sure herself that George had saved her. But George hesitated. He said it wasn't "a square deal," whatever that means, but Kittie said no one need tell any lies. She had gone into the hole and George had pulled her out. She thought they needn't explain how deep it was, and George admitted thoughtfully that "no truly loving family should hunger for statistics at such a moment." Finally he said: "By Jove! I'll do it. All's fair in love and war." Then he asked Mabel if she thought she could "lend intelligent support to the star performers," and she said she could. So George picked Kittie up in his arms, and Mabel cried--she was so excited it was easy, and she wanted to do it all the time--and the sad little procession "homeward wended its weary way," as the poet says.