"It’s mine," you cried, reaching out your hand. "No—o," screamed Lizbeth. "It’s for my dollies’ breakfast," and she hugged the stunted, speckled fruit to her bosom so tightly that its brown, soft side was crushed in her hands. You tried to snatch it from her, but she struck you with her little clinched fist. "No—o," she cried again. "It’s my dollies’ pear." Her lip quivered. Tears sprang into her eyes. You straightened yourself. "All right," you muttered, fiercely. "All right for you. I’ll run away, I will, and I’ll never come back—_never_!" You climbed the stone wall. "No," cried Lizbeth. "I’ll never come back," you called, defiantly, as you stood on the top. "No," Lizbeth screamed, scrambling to her feet and turning to you a face wet with tears and white with terror. "Never, _never_!" was your farewell to her as you jumped. Deaf to the pitiful wail behind you, you ran out across the meadow, muttering to yourself your fateful, parting cry. Lizbeth looked for a moment at the wall where you had stood. Then she ran sobbing after you, around through the gate, for the wall was too high for her, and out into the field, where to her blurred vision you were only a distant figure now, never, never to return. "Harry!" she screamed, and the wind blew her cry to you across the meadow, but you ran on, unheeding. She struggled after you. The daisies brushed her skirt. Creeping vines caught at her little shoes and she fell. Scratched by briers, she scrambled to her feet again and stumbled on, blind with tears, crying ever "Harry, Harry!" but so faintly now in her sobs and breathlessness that you did not hear. At the top of a weary, weary slope she sank helpless and heartbroken in the grass, a little huddle of curls and pinafore, so that your conscience smote you as you stood waiting, half hidden by the hedge. "Don’t be a cry-baby. I was only fooling," you said, and at the sound of your voice Lizbeth lifted her face from the grasses and put out her arms to you with a cry. In one hand was the little pear. "Oh, I don’t want the old thing," you cried, throwing yourself beside her on the turf. Smiling again through her tears, Lizbeth reached out a little hand scratched by briers, and patted your cheek. "Harry," she said, "you can have all my animal crackers for your m’nagerie, if you want to, and my little brown donkey; and I’ll play horse with you any time you want me to, Harry, I will." So, after all, you did not run away, and you and Lizbeth went home at last across the meadow, hand in hand. Behind you, hidden and forgotten in the red clover, lay your quarrel and the little pear. When Lizbeth loved you, there were stars in her brown eyes; when you looked more closely, so that you were very near their shining, you saw in their round, black pupils, smiling back at you, the face of a little boy; and then in your own eyes, Lizbeth, holding your cheeks between her hands, found the face of a little girl. "Why, it’s _me_!" she cried.