to be kissed.

Reuben ate his food rapidly, pouring his coffee into the saucer,
and drinking it in loud gulps that began presently to make Gay feel
decidedly nervous. Once the young man inadvertently glanced toward
him, and turning away the instant afterwards, he found the girl's eyes
watching him with a defiant and threatening look. Her passionate defence
of Reuben reminded Gay of a nesting bird under the eye of the hunter.
She did not plead, she dared--actually dared him to criticise the old
man even in his thoughts!

That Molly herself was half educated and possessed some smattering of
culture, it was easy to see. She was less rustic in her speech than his
Europa, and there was the look of breeding, or of blood, in the fine
poise of her head, in her small shapely hands, which he remembered were
a distinguishing mark of the Gays.

"Mr. Mullen came for you in his cart," said Reuben, glancing from one
to the other of his hearers with his gentle and humble look. "I told him
you must have forgotten as you'd ridden down to the low grounds."

"No, I didn't forget," replied Molly, indifferent apparently to the
restraint of Gay's presence, "I did it on purpose." Meeting the young
man's amused and enquiring expression, she added defiantly, "There are
plenty of girls that are always ready to go with him and it's because
I'm not that he wants me."

"He's not the only one, to judge from what I heard at the ordinary."

She shrugged her shoulders--an odd gesture for a rustic coquette--while