"Arthur!"

They would have made a subject for an artist as they stood with clasped
hands, the handsome dark-eyed man, the girl, in her white dress, her
milk-pail on her arm, and her wondering grey eyes upturned to his.

"Why, Beth, you look at me as if I were a spectre."

"But, Arthur, you're so changed! Why, you're a man, now!" at which he
laughed a merry laugh that echoed clear to the kitchen.

Beth joined her father and Arthur in the parlor, and they talked the old
days over again before they retired to rest. Beth took out her pale blue
dress again before she went to sleep. Yes, she would wear that to the
Mayfair's next day, and there were white moss roses at the dining-room
window that would just match. So thinking she laid it carefully away and
slept her girl's sleep that night.




CHAPTER II.

_A DREAM OF LIFE._


It was late the next afternoon when Beth stood before the mirror
fastening the moss roses in her belt. Arthur had gone away with her
father to see a friend, and would not return till well on in the