Leonidas did not approach the fence, partly through shyness and partly
through a more subtle instinct that this man was not in the secret. He
was right, for only the next day, as he passed to the post-office, she
called him to the fence.

"Did you see me wave my hand to you yesterday?" she asked pleasantly.

"Yes, ma'am; but"--he hesitated--"I didn't come up, for I didn't think
you wanted me when any one else was there."

She laughed merrily, and lifting his straw hat from his head, ran the
fingers of the other hand through his damp curls. "You're the brightest,
dearest boy I ever knew, Leon," she said, dropping her pretty face to
the level of his own, "and I ought to have remembered it. But I
don't mind telling you I was dreadfully frightened lest you might
misunderstand me and come and ask for another letter--before HIM." As
she emphasized the personal pronoun, her whole face seemed to change:
the light of her blue eyes became mere glittering points, her nostrils
grew white and contracted, and her pretty little mouth seemed to narrow
into a straight cruel line, like a cat's. "Not a word ever to HIM,
of all men! Do you hear?" she said almost brusquely. Then, seeing the
concern in the boy's face, she laughed, and added explanatorily: "He's a
bad, bad man, Leon, remember that."

The fact that she was speaking of her husband did not shock the boy's
moral sense in the least. The sacredness of those relations, and even of
blood kinship, is, I fear, not always so clear to the youthful mind as
we fondly imagine. That Mr. Burroughs was a bad man to have excited
this change in this lovely woman was Leonidas's only conclusion. He
remembered how his sister's soft, pretty little kitten, purring on her