"There's no trappin' you, Miss Lucy Webster, is there?" she exclaimed, rising from her chair and clapping on her hat. "You're a cute one, an awful cute one!" "Why?" "Oh, you don't need to be told," chuckled Ellen. "Anybody as cute as you are, _knows._" With that she was gone. All the morning the girl busied herself within doors, exchanging one duty for another. Toward noon, however, she made an excursion to the garden for lettuce and radishes. Her pathway lay close to the wall, and on her return to the house she was amazed to see lying on the topmost stone of the ruined heap a mammoth bunch of sweet peas. There was no mistaking the fact that the flowers were intended for her, for her name had been hastily scrawled on a bit of crumpled paper and placed beside them. Nothing could have surprised her more than to stumble upon this offering. Evidently the blossoms had just been gathered, for the raindrops of the previous night still sparkled among their petals, jeweling with brilliancy their kaleidoscopic riot of color. She caught them up with delight, burying her face in their cool fragrance. Where had they come from? She knew no one who raised sweet peas,--no one except the Howes, and of course----she halted and blushed. Could it have been the Howes? "_Mary's are white_" she heard herself automatically repeating in Jane's phrases. "_'Liza's pink, an' mine are purple. Martin has his in another place, 'cause he likes all the colors mixed together. But he never picks his nor lets us. He says he likes to see 'em growin'._" And now, by some miracle, here were the blossoms of Martin's raising, their prismatic tints exquisite as a sunset. It was like holding the rainbow in one's hands. She knew the Howes too well to cherish for an instant the illusion that any of the three sisters had cut the flowers from the vines. They would not have dared. No. No hand but Martin's had plucked them. With a strange fluttering of her heart, Lucy carried the bouquet to her own room, a corner of the house where Ellen seldom intruded. There she bent over it with a happy, triumphant little smile. Then, from behind the shelter of the muslin curtain, she blew a kiss from her finger tips to Mr. Martin Howe, who was hoeing potatoes on the hill, with his back set squarely toward the Webster mansion. When Ellen returned at noon, there was still a shell-like flush of pink on the girl's cheek and on her lips a smile for which her aunt could not account. "Where you been?" inquired the woman suspiciously. "Nowhere. Why?" "You look as if somebody'd sent you a Christmas tree full of presents." Lucy laughed softly. "You ain't been to the Howes'?" "I haven't been anywhere," repeated Lucy, throwing up her chin. "I'm telling the truth." Ellen eyed her shrewdly. "Yes, I reckon you are," she observed slowly. "I ain't never caught you lyin' yet." Then as if an afterthought had occurred to her, she added: "Likely you've been thinkin' 'bout the will I've been makin'."