"You mean drink and cards? I swear I'd forgotten them for three
years--until yesterday. I reckon I've the better of them."

"Then you'll make dad and me happy. You'll be happy, too."

Columbine thrilled at the touch of fineness coming out in him. There was
good in him, whatever the mad, wild pranks of his boyhood.

"Dad wants us to marry," he said, suddenly, with shyness and a strange,
amused smile. "Isn't that funny? You and me--who used to fight like cat
and dog! Do you remember the time I pushed you into the old mud-hole?
And you lay in wait for me, behind the house, to hit me with a
rotten cabbage?"

"Yes, I remember," replied Columbine, dreamily. "It seems so long ago."

"And the time you ate my pie, and how I got even by tearing off your
little dress, so you had to run home almost without a stitch on?"

"Guess I've forgotten that," replied Columbine, with a blush. "I must
have been very little then."

"You were a little devil.... Do you remember the fight I had with
Moore--about you?"

She did not answer, for she disliked the fleeting expression that
crossed his face. He remembered too well.

"I'll settle that score with Moore," he went on. "Besides, I won't have