He drew a long breath and got up. All the joy had gone out of the summer night for him, poor lad. He glanced down the Street, where Palmer Howe had gone home happily with Sidney's friend Christine. Palmer would always know how he stood with Christine. She would never talk about doing things, or being things. Either she would marry Palmer or she would not. But Sidney was not like that. A fellow did not even caress her easily. When he had only kissed her arm--He trembled a little at the memory. “I shall always want you,” he said. “Only--you will never come back.” It had not occurred to either of them that this coming back, so tragically considered, was dependent on an entirely problematical going away. Nothing, that early summer night, seemed more unlikely than that Sidney would ever be free to live her own life. The Street, stretching away to the north and to the south in two lines of houses that seemed to meet in the distance, hemmed her in. She had been born in the little brick house, and, as she was of it, so it was of her. Her hands had smoothed and painted the pine floors; her hands had put up the twine on which the morning-glories in the yard covered the fences; had, indeed, with what agonies of slacking lime and adding blueing, whitewashed the fence itself! “She's capable,” Aunt Harriet had grumblingly admitted, watching from her sewing-machine Sidney's strong young arms at this humble spring task. “She's wonderful!” her mother had said, as she bent over her hand work. She was not strong enough to run the sewing-machine. So Joe Drummond stood on the pavement and saw his dream of taking Sidney in his arms fade into an indefinite futurity. “I'm not going to give you up,” he said doggedly. “When you come back, I'll be waiting.” The shock being over, and things only postponed, he dramatized his grief a trifle, thrust his hands savagely into his pockets, and scowled down the Street. In the line of his vision, his quick eye caught a tiny moving shadow, lost it, found it again. “Great Scott! There goes Reginald!” he cried, and ran after the shadow. “Watch for the McKees' cat!” Sidney was running by that time; they were gaining. Their quarry, a four-inch chipmunk, hesitated, gave a protesting squeak, and was caught in Sidney's hand. “You wretch!” she cried. “You miserable little beast--with cats everywhere, and not a nut for miles!” “That reminds me,”--Joe put a hand into his pocket,--“I brought some chestnuts for him, and forgot them. Here.” Reginald's escape had rather knocked the tragedy out of the evening. True, Sidney would not marry him for years, but she had practically promised to sometime. And when one is twenty-one, and it is a summer night, and life stretches eternities ahead, what are a few years more or less? Sidney was holding the tiny squirrel in warm, protecting hands. She smiled up at the boy. “Good-night, Joe.” “Good-night. I say, Sidney, it's more than half an engagement. Won't you kiss me good-night?”