been about all I had," he admitted with a cheerful laugh. "I hope I'll make more friends out yonder. But Viva,"—his hand pressed closer—"is it only—friends?"
She took fright at once and drew away from him. "You mustn't do that, Morton!"
"Do what?" A shaft of moonlight shone on his teasing face. "What am I doing?" he said.
It is difficult—it is well nigh impossible—for a girl to put a name to certain small cuddlings not in themselves terrifying, nor even unpleasant, but which she obscurely feels to be wrong.
Viva flushed and was silent—he could see the rich color flood her face.
"Come now—don't be hard on a fellow!" he urged. "I shan't see you again in ever so long. You'll forget all about me before a year's over."
She shook her head, still silent.
"Won't you speak to me—Viva?"
"I wish——" She could not find the words she wanted. "Oh, I wish you—wouldn't!"
"Wouldn't what, Girlie? Wouldn't go away? Sorry to disoblige—but I have to. There's no place for me here."
The girl felt the sad truth of that.
"Aunt Rella will get used to it after a while. I'll write to her—I'll make lots of money—and come back in a few years—astonish you all!—Meanwhile—kiss me good-by, Viva!"
She drew back shyly. She had never kissed him. She had never in her life kissed any man younger than an uncle.
"No, Morton—you mustn't——" She shrank away into the shadow.
But, there was no great distance to shrink to, and his strong arms soon drew her close again.
"Suppose you never see me again," he said. "Then you'll wish you hadn't been so stiff about it."
She thought of this dread possibility with a sudden chill of horror, and while she hesitated, he took her face between her hands and kissed her on the mouth.
Steps were heard coming down the path.
"They're on," he said with a little laugh. "Good-by, Viva!"
He vaulted the fence and was gone.
"What are you doing here, Vivian?" demanded her father.
"I was saying good-by to Morton," she answered with a sob.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself—philandering out here in the middle of the night with that scapegrace! Come in the house and go to bed at once—it's ten o'clock."
Bowing to this confused but almost equally incriminating chronology, she followed him in, meekly enough as to her outward seeming, but inwardly in a state of stormy tumult.
She had been kissed!
Her father's stiff back before her could not blot out the radiant, melting moonlight, the rich sweetness of the flowers, the tender, soft, June night.
"You go to bed," said he once more. "I'm ashamed of you."
"Yes, father," she answered.
Her little room, when at last she was safely in it and had shut the door and put a chair against it—she had no key—seemed somehow changed.
She lit the lamp and stood looking at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were star-bright. Her cheeks flamed softly. Her mouth looked guilty and yet glad.
She put the light out and went to the window, kneeling there, leaning out in the fragrant stillness, trying to arrange in her mind this mixture of grief, disapproval, shame and triumph.
When the Episcopal church clock struck eleven, she went to bed in guilty haste, but not to sleep.
For a long time she lay there watching the changing play of moonlight on the floor.
She felt almost as if she were married.
CHAPTER II. BAINVILLE EFFECTS.
Lockstep, handcuffs, ankle-ball-and-chain,
Dulltoil and dreary food and drink;
Small cell, cold cell, narrow bed and hard;
High wall, thick wall, window iron-barred;
Stone-paved, stone-pent little prison yard—
Young hearts weary of monotony and pain,
Young hearts weary of reiterant refrain:
"They say—they do—what will people think?"
At the two front windows of their rather crowded little parlor sat Miss Rebecca and Miss Josie Foote, Miss Sallie being out on a foraging expedition—marketing, as it were, among their neighbors to collect fresh food for thought.
A tall, slender girl in brown passed on the opposite walk.
"I should think Vivian Lane would get tired of wearing brown," said Miss Rebecca.
"I don't know why she should," her sister promptly protested, "it's a good enough wearing color, and becoming to her."
"She could afford to have more variety," said Miss Rebecca. "The Lanes are mean enough about some things, but I know they'd like to have her dress better. She'll never get married in the world."
"I don't know why not. She's only twenty-five—and good-looking."
"Good-looking! That's not everything. Plenty of girls marry that are not good-looking—and plenty of good-looking girls stay single."
"Plenty of homely ones, too. Rebecca," said Miss Josie, with meaning. Miss Rebecca certainly was not handsome. "Going to the library, of course!" she pursued presently. "That girl reads all the time."
"So does her grandmother. I see her going and coming from that library every day almost."
"Oh, well—she reads stories and things like that. Sallie goes pretty often and she notices. We use that library enough, goodness knows, but they are there every day. Vivian Lane reads the queerest things—doctor's books and works on pedagoggy."
"Godgy," said Miss Rebecca, "not goggy." And as her sister ignored this correction, she continued: "They might as well have let her go to college when she was so set on it."
"College! I don't believe she'd have learned as much in any college, from what I hear of 'em, as she has in all this time at home." The Foote girls had never entertained a high opinion of extensive culture.
"I don't see any use in a girl's studying so much," said Miss Rebecca with decision.
"Nor I," agreed Miss Josie. "Men don't like learned women."
