pocketless young woman attired for the serious business of a school
treat carry upon her person? She laughed in pretty embarrassment.
"If I gave you something quite useless, what would you do with it?"

"I 'u'd hide it safe, so 'ut nobody should see it," said Paul,
thinking of his precious cards.

"Wouldn't you show it to anybody?"

"By Gum!--" he checked himself suddenly. Such, he had learned,
was not Sunday-school language. "I wouldno' show it to a dog," said
he.

Maisie Shepherd, aware of romantic foolishness, slipped a cornelian
heart from a thin gold chain round her neck. "It's all I can give
you for a prize, if you will have it."

If he would have it? The Koh-i-Noor' in his clutch (and a knowledge
of its value) could not have given him more thrilling rapture. He
was speechless with amazement; Maisie, thrilled too, realized that a
word spoken would have rung false. The boy gloated over his
treasure; but she did not know--how could she?--what it meant to
him. To Paul the bauble was a bit of the warm wonder that was she.

"How are you going to keep it?" she asked.

He hoicked a bit of his shirt-tail from his breeches and proceeded
to knot the cornelian heart secure therein. Maisie fled rapidly on
the verge of hysterics, After that the school treat had but one
meaning for Paul. He fed, it is true, in Pantagruelian fashion on