"Oh, how little you know me!" Archie exclaimed, and sank back on the turf in a despairing attitude. But a moment later he began to laugh, and sat up again. "There _was_ a bit once," he said confidentially, "and for the life of me I couldn't think whose it could be. There were two or three girls I knew it couldn't possibly belong to, but that didn't help me very far. That lock of hair quite haunted me. See what it is to have such susceptible feelings! I used to look at it a dozen times a day, and I couldn't sleep at night for thinking of it. At last I said to myself, 'I don't care whose it is: she was a nice, dear girl anyhow, and I'm sure she wouldn't like to think that she bothered me in this way.' So I consigned it to a watery grave. I felt very melancholy when it went, I can tell you, and if my own hair had been a reasonable length I'd have sent a bit of it overboard with hers, just for company's sake. But I'd had a fever, and I was cropped like a convict, so I couldn't." "You tell that little story very nicely," said Sissy when he paused. "Do you always mention it when you ask--" "Why, no," Archie exclaimed. "I thought _you_ would take it as it was meant--as the greatest possible compliment to yourself. But I suppose it's my destiny to be misunderstood. Don't you see that I _couldn't_ tell that to any one unless I were quite sure that she was so much higher, so altogether apart, that she never, never could get mixed up with anybody else in my mind?" "She had better have some very particular sort of curliness in her hair too," said Sissy. "Don't you think it would be safer?" "Oh, this is too much!" he exclaimed. "It's sport to you, evidently, but you don't consider that it's death to me. I say, come away, and we'll look for this green stuff."