“How am I to get out of this dreadful place?” mentally contemplating meanwhile the impossibility of clambering through that fence with a young gentleman looking on. “I will let down the bars,” he said, and they turned toward the fence. “Let's see, this is your melon, is it not?” he observed, stooping to pick up the booty Lina had dropped in her first panic. “You must keep that anyhow. You 've earned it.” Since the tables turned so unexpectedly in her favor, Lina had recovered her dignity in some degree, and had become very freezing toward this young man, by whom she began to feel she had been very badly treated. In this reaction of indignation she had really almost forgotten how she came in the garden at all. But this reference to the melon quite upset her new equanimity, and as Arthur grinned broadly she blushed and stood there in awful confusion. Finally she blurted out:-- “I didn't want your stupid melon. I only wanted some fun. I can't explain, and I don't care whether you understand it or not.” Tears of vexation glittered in her eyes. He sobered instantly, and said, with an air of the utmost deference:-- “Pardon me for laughing, and do me the justice to believe that I 'm in no sort of danger of misunderstanding you. I hooked too many melons myself as a boy not to sympathize perfectly. But you must really let me carry the melon home for you. What would the girls say, if you returned empty-handed?” “Well, I will take the melon,” she said, half defiantly; “but I should prefer not to have your company.” He did not reply till he had let down the bars, and then said:-- “The streets are not safe at this hour, and you 've had frights enough for one night.” She made no further objections, and with the watermelon poised on his shoulder he walked by her side, neither speaking a word, till they reached the gate of the Seminary grounds. There she stopped, and, turning, extended her hands for the melon. As he gave it to her their eyes met a moment, and their mutual appreciation of the humor of the situation expressed itself in an irrepressible smile that seemed instantly to make them acquainted, and she responded almost kindly to his low “Good-evening.”