Nat, although as full of fun as Tavia herself, could be grave; and he made his intention and his desires very plain to the girl. Tavia would not show him all that was in her heart. That was not her way. She was always inclined to hide her deeper feelings beneath a light manner and light words. But she was brave and she was honest. When he pinned her right down to the question, yes or no, Tavia looked courageously into Nat’s eyes and said: “Yes, Nat. _I do._ But somebody besides you must ask me before I will agree to—to ‘make you happy’ as you call it.” “For the good land’s sake!” gasped Nat. “Who’s business is it but ours? If you love me as I love you——” “Yes, I know,” interrupted Tavia, with laughter breaking forth. “‘No knife can cut our love in two.’ But, _dear_——” “Oh, Tavia!” “Wait, honey,” she whispered, with her face close pressed against his shoulder. “No! don’t kiss me now. You’ve kissed me before—in fun. The next time you kiss me it must be in solemn earnest.” “By heaven, girl!” exclaimed Nat, hoarsely. “Do you think I am fooling now?” “No, boy,” she whispered, looking up at him again suddenly. “But somebody else must ask me before I have a right to promise what you want.” “Who?” demanded Nat, in alarm. “You know that I am a poor girl. Not only that, but I do not come from the same stock that you do. There is no blue blood in my veins,” and she uttered a little laugh that might have sounded bitter had there not been the tremor of tears in it. “What nonsense, Tavia!” the young man cried, shaking her gently by the shoulders. “Oh no, Nat! Wait! I am a poor girl and I come of very, very common stock. I don’t mean I am ashamed of my poverty, or of the fact that my father and mother both sprang from the laboring class. “But you might be expected when you marry to take for a wife a girl from a family whose forebears were _something_. Mine were not. Why, one of my grandfathers was an immigrant and dug ditches——” “Pshaw! I had a relative who dug a ditch, too. In Revolutionary times——” “That is it exactly,” Tavia hastened to say. “I know about him. He helped dig the breastworks on Breeds Hill and was wounded in the Battle of Bunker Hill. I know all about that. Your people were Pilgrim and Dutch stock.” “Immigrants, too,” said Nat, muttering. “And maybe some of them left their country across the seas for their country’s good.” “It doesn’t matter,” said the shrewd Tavia. “Being an immigrant in America in sixteen hundred is one thing. Being an immigrant in the latter end of the nineteenth century is an entirely different pair of boots.” “Oh, Tavia!” “No. Your mother has been as kind to me—and for years and years—as though I were her niece, too, instead of just one of Dorothy’s friends. She may have other plans for her sons, Nat.” “Nonsense!”