to his lips.

"She grows sweeter and finer all the time," he muttered to himself.
"Why shouldn't men be eager to call, often and long?"

At last the mare stumbled slightly, and Prescott jerked the animal
so quickly and almost savagely on the lines that Miss Bentley
looked at him with something of a start.

"Dick," spoke Laura at last, turning and looking him frankly,
sweetly in the eyes, "have I done anything to offend you?"

"You, Laura?"

"I wondered," she continued. "You have been so very silent."

"I am afraid I was thinking," muttered Dick. "And that's a very
rude thing to do when it makes one seem to ignore the lady who
is with him," he added, forcing a smile. "I beg your pardon,
Laura, ten times over."

"Oh, I don't mind your being abstracted," she answered simply,
"so long as I am not the cause of it."

"You-----"

Dick checked himself quickly.

He had been right on the point of admitting that she had been
the cause of his abstraction, and such a statement as that would