"But why?" he asked her. "Why?" she flashed. "Because he wouldn't deserve to be spoken to, nor even looked at." "No; I don't mean that," the boy answered, still with the same apparent desire to probe the situation to the very bottom. "But why should you speak to me, and not to him?" She suspected him of fishing for a sweetie, and, out of sheer contrariety, she flung him a bit of crust. "Because I am used to you, I suppose. One gets so, after eight or nine years of growing up together." And, in that one sentence, Catie showed the practical maturity of her grasp on life and on Scott Brenton. Half way to the distant schoolhouse, she spoke again, this time more tactfully. "Never mind the spat, Scott. That's over and done with, even if you were horrid," she told him. "But really, now we're growing up, we ought to think things over and decide things." And, despite her short frocks and her childish face, her words held a curious accent of mature decision. "What sort of things?" "The things you are going to do, when you grow up." "I have decided, I tell you," he said stubbornly. "To be a country parson, all your days?" she queried flippantly. "To be a minister, yes. Not a country one, though." "Oh." She pondered. "What then?" He looked over her head, not so much in disdain as in search of a more distant vista. "In a city church, of course, a great stone church with towers and chimes and arches, and crowded full of people, and with their horses and carriages waiting at the doors," he answered, he who had never trodden a paved street in all his life. "Oh!" But, this time, the monosyllable was breathy, and not sharp. "Yes, and there will be a choir as good as those people who sang at the town hall, last Thanksgiving, and flowers, lots of them, roses in winter, even," he went on eagerly. "And you can hear a pin drop while I am preaching, only once in a while somebody will sob a little in the pauses, and then put in a roll of hundred-dollar bills when the contribution box comes round." Catie drew another long breath, and her eyes sparkled. "Lovely!" she said, and she stretched out the word to its full length by way of expressing her contentment. "And where'll I be?" Scott withdrew his eyes from distant space and gazed upon her blankly. "I hadn't thought about that," he said. Then, for an instant, the glory of his dream was shattered. "Pig!" Catie said concisely. However, it was not within the limits of her curiosity to drop the prediction at this piquant point. The framing of the picture, for so she regarded it, had pleased her. Scott failing, she must fill in the portrait to suit herself.