"self-respecting girls" should do. Annie flashed a blazing look at
him, slammed the gate, and left him alone on the sidewalk. A little
later he saw the objectionable man making a bargain with Wing about
carrying a note, and with a sore and angry heart he watched the shabby
hat and the long queue travel up the hill to the Millner home.

While he was at work among his trees that afternoon he saw them ride
past. He noted the defiant poise of Annie's head, which did not turn
by so much as a hair's breadth toward the cottage and the trees and
him, but he was not near enough to see that her eyes were red and that
she bit her lip to control its trembling. So he wrote a letter to her
that evening saying that evidently they had made a mistake; and an hour
later he had the engagement ring in his pocket and a great bitterness
in his heart.

Two days afterward, as Annie sat on the veranda of a friend's house
near the depot she saw the hotel omnibus coming down the street with
Ellison in it. "Why, there's Robert!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," said her friend, looking at her curiously, "he 's going East.
Did n't you know it?"

Instantly all of Annie's pride gave way. She was in the wrong, she
told herself, and she would ask him to forgive her. She would send a
note to him at the station and ask him not to go away without seeing
her.

"I 'll have time," she thought, "for they said the train is a few
minutes late to-day and I 'll get Wing to carry it over to the station.
There he is now, waiting at the curve."