She struck her hands together and chirruped. Fred stared at her, abashed. His hand lay where it had been, but her warm slim fingers had slipped away! When Phil was "thinking" she wholly bewildered him. Just as a girl, the loveliest in the world, Phil was far enough removed from him; but as a girl who "wrote," who improvised verses, who was caught away as by invisible hands in her fitful dreaming, she deepened his humility. He had often wondered whether he would ever gain courage to touch her hand in just that way; and now that he had dared it had profited him nothing. She had apparently been wholly unmindful of an act that had left him trembling. She hadn't even resented it! "Phil, I've been looking forward to seeing you all day. I've been thinking about you--particularly." "That's not so surprising," replied Phil, returning to earth a little reluctantly, "when I've been seeing you every evening and it was pretty sure to happen so to-day. Let's hurry along or Amy will say bitter things to us that he will always regret." "I want to tell you something before we go on," he said, with a gravity that caused her to look at him sharply. "Fred Holton, you and I are old friends now, and good pals. I hope you're not going to spoil it all." "I love you, Phil; I can't help telling you: I have to tell you now." She reached down, picked up a pebble and flung it at the star. Assured, by the sound of its fall afar off in the corn, that it had missed Jupiter, she gave him her attention. He broke in before she could speak. "I know there are reasons why I shouldn't tell you. I want you to know I have thought about them; I know that there are family reasons why--" She laid her hand gently on his arm. "Dear old Fred," she began, as a boy might have spoken to a comrade in trouble, "there's nothing about you that isn't altogether fine. The thing you were about to say you don't need to say--ever! If Amy didn't know you were one of the best fellows in the world, he wouldn't have got behind you when things were going wrong. He knew all those things that are in your mind and he didn't care, and you may be sure I don't. So that's all right, Fred." His hope mounted as she spoke. The hand on his arm thrilled him. The fact that he was a Holton did not, then, make any difference, and he had been troubled about that ever since he realized how dear she had grown to him.