"I was mighty rude," he said. "I went back to the pond to say so, but
you were gone. I beg your pardon."

She liked the tone of his voice and his good red blushes. "That's all
right," she nodded reassuringly. But he did not go away. There was
something else.

"If--you know what you said? If you'd offer _again_--"

Loraine glanced over her shoulder. Laura Ann was rattling stove-lids at
the other end of the kitchen. "I offer _now_," Loraine said in a
low voice.

"Then I accept." The boy's voice was eager. "I'll study like everything!
I thought about it in the night--I thought I'd like to surprise my
mother. If I could get into college next year--" His eyes shone. "Oh I
say, I'd do 'most anything for that!"

The little plan was hurriedly made, in low tones, there on Emmeline
Camp's little doorsteps. The boy was to take his books to the pond where
Loraine had caught her fish. He was to study there alone for a time
every day, and in the afternoon she was to stroll that way and go over
the work with him and set him right in all the wrong places.

"It was in Latin and mathematics I failed up," Jane Cotton's Sam
explained.

"It's Latin and mathematics we'll tackle!" softly laughed Loraine.
"You wait--you see--you _grind!_"