"I've no doubt of that," said Kitty politely. "Dear me! Five hundred
spelling-books!" But she felt humiliated. She had neither picked
grapes nor taught freedmen. What thin wisps of hair these women had
stopping to speak to Mr. Muller! She put her hand suddenly to the back
of her head.

"Those are employees in the canning-house," he said as they passed on.
"One is educating herself as a short-hand reporter, and the other has
a lecture ready for next winter on Shakespeare's Women."

"What admirable persons they must be! Ah! now I have it right!"
setting her hat higher on the light chestnut coils. Mr. Muller looked,
and his eye rested there. She knew that, though the back of her head
was toward him. But lover? Nonsense! He meant no doubt to propose that
she should go into the typesetting business or stenography.

Now, to tell Kitty's secret, she had had her love-affair her mother
knew nothing about, which made her purblind in this matter. It was
this: There was a certain cave (originally a spring-house) behind
the walnut trees, quite covered over with trumpet-vines and
partridge-berries. She had a bench there, from which she could see
only the shady old house and the sun going down. When she was a child
of about eight, alone all day long, year in and out, she had taken
down this bench, and working stealthily and blushing terribly, had
made it large enough for two. She never allowed anybody, not even
Peter, dearest of all, to come into the cave or sit on the bench
afterward. What her childish fancy of an unknown friend was, or how
it grew and altered with her years, only she knew, though after she
was grown she told her father of a certain Sir Guy in some of his
crusading stories in whom she had believed as a fact. "I actually