"You can say anything you like to me, Miss Penny Ante," he replied encouragingly.

"Come away where no one can overhear our voices."

They strolled away out of the moonlight to the shelter of some shrubbery where they talked long and earnestly. On the way back to the house, Pen, lifting her eyes to his, was struck by the look in his boyish face.

"Jo," she said, a slight wistfulness in her tone, "you really love--the way a woman loves."

"What's the use," he said defiantly, "if the one I love won't have me--she--"

He stopped short and looked at her keenly.

"You know, Jo, you must learn to be patient and await--developments."

A light leaped to his eyes.

"I'll wait! But the limit mustn't be too far. Do you know what Gene confided to me to-night? He thinks that Kurt is in love with you!"

She laughed mirthlessly.

"Kurt! He wouldn't know how to love. If he did, he wouldn't let himself.

He would hang on to his love like a Jew to a bargain. Who would want a grudging love?"

"Kurt is my pal--he--"

"He won't be if he finds us lingering here. You reconnoitre and see if he is still in the window. I don't intend to shinny up this tree. It's so much easier going down than up."

"You can go in the kitchen way. It's cook's affinity night, and she's somewhere with Gus."

"The kitchen is where I go in then. Jo, are you very sure that you are in love--enough to marry a thief? You're only a boy. Better keep your love until you are older."

"I am not a boy. I am two and twenty."

"Quite an old man! I'll see you very soon again, and maybe I can give you--your answer. Kurt goes to town early in the morning. Meet me in the pergola near the garage. Good night!"

By way of the kitchen and back stairs she reached her room undetected.

"Dear old Jo! Poor Kurt!" she thought sleepily, as she stretched herself luxuriously to rest. "It's a very small, very funny old world, and the thief is certainly getting in deep waters."

On the trail to Westcott's, Jo was chuckling to himself.

"The little thief! If she isn't the slickest little la.s.s I ever saw!"

In the library, oblivious to time and place, Kurt still lingered, his dream-like memories trying to learn the tune that Pan was piping on his reeds.

CHAPTER VIII

At the breakfast-table Pen found at her plate a little bunch of flowers, clumsily arranged and tied.

"From Jo," informed Betty--"The Bulletin," as her father was wont to call her. "He came just after Uncle Kurt started for town."

Pen smiled as she took up the little stiff nosegay. She held it lightly for a moment, looking down at the blossoms. There was a mute appeal in the little messengers from the boyish lover. Something infinitely tender stirred in her heart for a second, bringing a tear to her eye, as she mused upon his boyish faith in love.

She put the flowers in the gla.s.s of water beside her plate, and gave her attention to the prattle of the children.

After breakfast she pinned the little nosegay to her middy and went down to the pergola.

Jo saw her coming and hurried forward to meet her, his eyes brightening when he saw the flowers.

"Thank you, Jo. They are very pretty."

"Thank you for wearing them."

"I asked you to come here this morning, Jo, so you would do me a favor."

"You know I would."

"Will you mail this letter for me? I wrote it last night after you left, and you are the only one I can trust. And--Jo--will you please not read the address?"

He put the letter in his pocket.

"You can trust me."

"You had better go, because I hear the rattle that can be made only by Kurt's car. He must have come back for something. You can go around the bend here."

"Say, Penny Ante, I don't like this deceiving him--"

"Just a bit longer, Jo," she said persuasively. "Mrs. Kingdon said to wait until her return."

He followed her instructions, and she returned to the house.

"It's a great possession," she thought musingly, "the big love of a true and simple heart like his. It would probably be idyllic to live a life of love up here in these hills with the man of one's choice, I suppose, but a happiness too tame for me. To be sure, there would be the excitement of trying to ruffle the love-feathers, but that, too, in time would pall. I wonder how much longer I shall stay hidden up here before my past finds me out. Any minute something is sure to drop and I will be called back--back to my other life that is less enticing now I have had a taste of domesticity.

"But," she reflected, "domesticity doesn't satisfy long. This semi-security is getting on my nerves. Hebby isn't so good a trailer as I feared he would be, or he'd have tracked me up here."

Her meditations were diverted by a tattoo upon her door which she had locked so that the ever-present, ever-prying Betty and the all-wise Francis could not intrude.

"Aunt Penny, let us in!" came in aggrieved chorus.

"I've a message for you, Aunt Pen. Open the door," came Francis' insistent voice.

The pounding and the voices forced a capitulation. She admitted the trio.

"Mrs. Merlin is going to take us to her house for the rest of the day,"

informed Francis, "and we will have a picnic dinner there. She would have asked you, too, only Uncle Kurt came back and wants you to ride with him.