"Yes, he has been here, once or twice, getting some cakes and milk for himself and partner, I guess, for he took two plates." "I thought I was his partner up here," said Diantha, in a somewhat injured tone. "Haven't you seen him this evening?" queried Aunt Clara Tyler. "Oh, yes, but I have been dancing so hard, I forgot all about him." "You may find some day, Dian, that two can play at the forgetting game," said Aunt Clara, with a tenderness that robbed the speech of any bitterness. "I wish they would," answered the girl indifferently. Nevertheless her vanity was touched, a few moments after, when she and her companion passed a rustic bower of boughs, twined and twisted into a lovely green retreat, where there was a small camp-fire smouldering in front, and a low couch inside, covered with softest buffalo robes, whereon sat her dearest friend, Ellen Tyler; and stretched out with his long legs to the fire, his arm supporting his head, and his face turned very intently to the young girl near him, was that recreant, John Stevens, who ought just now to be suffering all the torments of a discarded lover. It was annoying to say the least. Dian acted as if she did not see them at all, and whispered with much animation to her companion, as they passed the light of the fire. She hurried at once to the bowery and none were more sprightly and gay until the ten o'clock bugle sounded throughout the valley, and then she allowed Henry Boyle to accompany her to the tent where the elder ones still sat chatting and enjoying themselves. Diantha Winthrop was pre-eminently sensible. She was sometimes annoyed with the frequent compliments she received as to this trait of her character. She was rarely angry with people; she never gossiped about anybody, and if she had nothing good to say, she rarely said anything at all. She was not impulsive, nor was she unduly swayed by her emotions, deep as they sometimes were. She acted upon mature thought, and only the few who were her intimate friends, really knew the value of her sterling character. Henry begged his companion to stroll up the hill-side a little, just fairly out of range of the jokers by the camp-fire, and the girl was the more willing because of that other couple under the pines across the tiny valley. "Here you are, Dian," cried out Rachel. "I was just wondering if you would not like to get that pop-corn and pop some for the crowd." But Henry was still begging under his breath, for her to come up in the shadow of the pines, and away from the crowd. "Can't Lucy and Josephine pop the corn, Rachel?" asked Dian, at last. Both children protested their utter weariness. "Ah, child," said young Boyle, patronizingly to little Lucy, "just pop the corn, like the leddy you are." "I'm not a 'leddy'," flashed the child back, "and I don't think it's fair, so there."