He picked up the book, and, turning the leaves, asked, in a deep, musical, slightly amused voice: “If you did not intend the missile for me, may I ask why you threw the book out at all?” “I was mad,” said Aline, flushing a little at the admission. “Mad--with such a good book as this? Sermons, aren’t they?” inquired Oran Delaney, lightly, as if talking to a child, which, in fact, she appeared to be, as seen at the window. Her face looked very young. He could not judge of the tall, rounded figure as she rested on her elbows, and looked down at him. “Yes--sermons--but awfully dry, you know,” she returned apologetically; “but, after all, you know, I oughtn’t to have thrown them away; mamma wouldn’t like it. Will you please throw the book back to me, Mr. Delaney?” He made several attempts to do so, but Aline was not clever at catching. It eluded the white, outstretched hands every time, and fell back into her neighbor’s garden. They both laughed. Aline began to think that her neighbor might not be such an ogre, after all. “Twice you have let it fall back upon my head,” he said. “You are too clumsy to catch it at all. Come down to the window in the first story, and I will hand it up to you.” “I--can’t,” replied Aline, flushing very red indeed. “Why not?” wonderingly. “I am locked into my room,” flushing deeper with shame. “Impossible! Who is your jailer?” inquired the gentleman. “Mamma; she has locked the door and gone off, leaving me here to read those dreary sermons that I threw away.” There is a moment’s silence. Aline reads palpable surprise on her neighbor’s face. The shame-flush deepens on her own. Presently, with a laugh, he says: “You must have been a very naughty girl, weren’t you?” “I didn’t mean to be, but mamma and Effie said I was. So they went off to the picnic, and locked me in here to punish me,” Aline said, growing confidential as her dread of Mr. Delaney grew less. “And oh, if they ever find out that I threw a book and knocked your hat off, I shall never hear the last of it. You won’t tell--will you?” pleadingly. “What would they do to you?--lock you into your room again?” “Worse than that, perhaps. I dare say they would devise some new punishment worse than any I have suffered yet,” sighing. “Are they cruel to you?” “Oh, no, only when I get into scrapes, as they say I am always doing. I am mischievous, they say, but I never mean to be. The way I get into trouble is like I did just now, you see, without knowing it,” she explains, plaintively. “A spoiled, willful child,” Oran Delaney says to himself, smiling; then, aloud: “Well, about this book--how am I to return it to you?” “I don’t know--and mamma will be so vexed with me,” plaintively. “Cannot you think of a plan?” The sweet entreaty in the blue eyes moved him strangely. He looks around. “Let me see. There is a step-ladder hereabouts used by the gardener in training vines against the wall. I might climb that.”