"Very much. It's entirely possible. Set your foot on that knob, reach up your arm, I'll let myself down far enough to get hold of your hand, and the next thing you know you'll be sitting beside me here." "Then what will happen?" "Then--we'll have a little talk I've been waiting for all day. I began to think I couldn't get it till evening fell, when the garden might help me out." "I think the garden is a very nice place for conversation." Sally put both hands behind her back, looking up at him. "Better than the limb of an oak tree? I admit it--for some sorts of conversation. Up here I should be forced to hold on with one arm. But there would be compensation in that, for with the other arm I should be forced to hold you on!" His laughing eyes looked down at her. She shook her head. "If I came up the tree I should prove that I am still a girl. If I am still a girl--" "Are you still a girl? Is that still your greatest desire?" He leaned forward, and the smile suddenly left his lips. His eyes searched hers. The face she bravely lifted to him was a girl's for youthful beauty, but into it had come something very sweet and womanly, which at last gave him the leave he had waited so long for. "No--I think I've grown up." she said, quite clearly. With an exclamation, the sinewy figure in the tree made short work of the ten feet to the ground, swinging itself off from the limb by both hands and dropping lightly down. "I don't think I could have waited a day longer," said Jarvis Burnside. Then, with the sheltering trunk of the great oak shutting off all possible vision from the far distant house, he drew Sally Lane into his eager arms. * * * * * "Why so late?" Maxwell Lane looked up to ask, as his sister Sally came somewhat hurriedly in to dinner, when the rest of the household were half through. "Please excuse my pink gingham," apologized Sally, as she dropped into her chair. She glanced from Mrs. Burnside in cool white to Josephine in crisp blue. "Nothing could be more becoming," Josephine asserted, always ready to defend her friend. "There's a strawberry stain on her right sleeve," Bob pointed out. "Where's Jarve?" asked Alec. "I saw him as I came in. He was on his way," replied Sally, lifting a glass of water to hide a pair of lips which wanted to laugh. Jarvis appeared. He also was in the garb be had worn all day. The pair seemed oddly similar in the nonchalance they could not quite successfully carry through. "Look here!" Alec scanned both faces. "You two have been up to something." "I've been up a tree," Jarvis replied. "Have you been up a tree too?" Alec questioned his sister. "Not at all." "Did you get him up one?"