"I must see her. I must, I must! Go and ask her to see me for a moment. I've disgusted her"--Nannie blushed; "but I'll make her forgive me." Sometimes he burst out in rages at David: "What does _he_ know about love? What kind of a man is he for Elizabeth? She's a girl now, but if he gets her, God help him when she wakes up, a woman! Not that _I_ mean to try to get her. Understand that. Nothing is farther from my mind than that. She belongs to him; I play fair. I don't pretend to be a saint, but I play fair. I don't cut in, when the man's my friend. No; I just want to see her and ask her to forgive me. That's all. Nannie, for God's sake ask her if she won't see me, just for five minutes!" He quivered with despair. Twice he went himself to Mr. Ferguson's house. The first time Miss White welcomed him warmly, and scuttled up-stairs saying she would "tell Elizabeth." She came down again, very soberly. "Elizabeth is busy, Blair, and she says she can't see you." The next time he called he was told at the door that "Miss Elizabeth asks to be excused." Then he wrote to her: "All I ask is that you shall see me, so that I can implore you to pardon me." Elizabeth tore the letter up and threw it into the fire. But she softened a little. "Poor Blair," she said to herself, "but of course I shall never forgive him." She had not told David what Blair had done. "He would be furious," she thought. "I'll tell him later--when we are married"; at the word, the warm, beautiful wave of young love rose in her heart; "later, when I belong to him, I will tell him everything!" She would tell him everything just as she would give him everything; not that she had much to give him--only herself and her little money. That blessed money, on which he and she could live for two years,--she was going to give him that! For she and Nannie and Cherry-pie had decided that if the money were _his_, by a gift, then David, who was perfectly crazy and noble about independence, would feel that he and Elizabeth were living on his money, not hers. It was an artless and very feminine distinction, but serious enough to the three women who were all so young--Elizabeth, in fact, being the oldest, and Cherry-pie, at sixty-three, the youngest. And not only had they discovered this way of overcoming David's scruples about a shorter engagement, but Elizabeth had had another inspiration: why not be married on the very day that the money came into her possession? "Oh, splendid!" said Nannie; but she spoke with an effort, remembering Blair. A little timidly, Elizabeth had told her uncle of this wonderful plan about the money. He snorted with amusement at her way of whipping the devil round the stump by a "gift" to David; but after a rather startled moment, although he would not commit himself to a date, he was inclined to think an earlier marriage practicable. We are selfish creatures at best, all of us: Elizabeth's way of being happy herself opened a possibility of happiness for her uncle. "Mrs.