“Yes, I have, and was accepted, too; but you are not to speak of it. I shall tell no one but you. It is to be kept a secret at present.” “Why?” Fred asked in a hard tone which roused Herbert to defend what he had done. “Why, you see, we are both young, I twenty and she seventeen, or thereabouts, and we cannot think of marrying for a long time—four years at least.” “Well?” Fred said in the same tone, while Herbert went on: “I must go to college and Louie must go to school and get polished up in the ways of the world, different from Merivale—a one-horse town, you know.” The hardness of Fred’s voice seemed to have passed to his face, but Herbert was not looking at him, as he continued: “It is better to keep quiet if I want any peace. Father would row it awfully, if he knew, and I might not be able to stand four years of blowing.” “Not for Louie?” Fred asked. “Why, yes,” Herbert replied, “for her, if for anybody, but continual dropping wears the stone and father is terrible at a nag. He has a great antipathy to Mr. Grey, although he doesn’t know a thing against him, for sure, except that he came here poor, and lived in the White Row, as our tenant, and Mrs. Grey took in sewing.” “That does not hurt Louie any,” was Fred’s prompt response. “Certainly not,” Herbert said very cheerfully, glad that Fred saw it in the right light. “But it hurts her with father, who might get so furious as to disinherit me. It is in him. You don’t know father.” “And if he did, would you give up Louie?” Fred asked, and something in his voice made Herbert look at him quickly. “By George!” he exclaimed, “I believe you are half in love with her, yourself.” The cigar Fred had been smoking when Herbert came up had gone out, and, brushing the ashes from it, he stood up and said: “It would be absurd to be in love with a girl to whom I never spoke until yesterday. I think her the prettiest girl I have ever seen, and the pluckiest; and congratulate you upon having won her. But don’t keep it a secret. It is unjust to her and a harm to yourself. Better stand the storm at once, if there is to be one. Good-night, or rather morning—for see, the sky is brightening in the east.” He walked away, while Herbert looked after him and said, “I am glad I got ahead of him, for if he isn’t in love with her now, he soon would be,” and that thought went a long way toward reconciling the young man to White’s Row and the plain sewing done for his mother.