Steve was silent. Mentally he was wondering if this was the mainspring of conduct in all women. He thought very likely it was. Mary often asked his advice and then always took her own way, and it was invariably opposite to the course he had indicated.

They had not gone much further, when, happening to look around for something, Nannie caught a glimpse of her dress skirt and saw that it was creased and stained with mud.

"There now! I've just ruined my gown!" she exclaimed, and then burst into pa.s.sionate tears.

"Miss Branscome! don't!" said Steve, who was fairly startled out of his usual quiet into something akin to excitement. "Don't! I beg of you. Nannie! don't cry, my dear!"

He failed to notice how he had spoken; so did she, apparently.

"We can make it all right, I know," he continued, but for a time she refused to be comforted.

"You would cry too, I guess, if you were in my place and would get such an awful scolding at home."

"No doubt I would," a.s.sented Steve in deep distress.

"I wish I were dead and buried under a landslide," sobbed Nannie.

In the depth of her sorrow she wanted to delve deep into mother earth.

"Oh, no. Don't wish that! What should we do without you?" said Steve earnestly.

"Oh, you needn't to worry," replied Nannie pettishly, the violence of her grief having spent itself. "Nothing so good as that is going to happen. I shall live to get home and have my head taken off, and stalk around as a torso ever afterward."

"Now do let me see if I can't set things to rights," said Steve.

"You've no idea how handy I am in such matters."

He proved the truth of his words by going to work upon the injured gown, and after patient effort bringing it out of its dilapidated condition in such shape that only a keen eye would detect any sign of mishap.

Nannie was delighted and, stimulated by the excitement attendant upon her rapid change of fortunes, became quite talkative.

"I wouldn't have minded it so much, but I have on one of my best gowns, and Aunt Frances makes such a fuss every time she has to buy me anything. She says it's of no use to spend on me. It don't amount to a row of pins."

Steve looked at her inquiringly. In actual time he was many years her senior, but Nannie had been in society for a season now, and even young girls age fast there--too fast, by far.

"She means I don't bid fair to get married off well. I'm not very popular, you know."

Still Steve was silent. Nannie was speaking in a language of which he was ignorant.

"I dressed this morning to go to Joe Harding's breakfast, but I hate him, and I went walking instead. Now I've got to see some of the girls who went and make up a lot of stuff about it at home, or Aunt Frances'll be awfully mad."

Steve looked into the beautiful face of the young girl who was talking in this repellent fashion. Then he took her gently by the hand and said in a firm, kindly tone:

"Nannie, you must come out of all this."

"How can I?" she asked. "I have no mother or father--no one who really cares. I suppose I'll marry Joe Harding some day. He wants me, and Aunt Frances keeps at me about it eternally, but I hate him."

"You must not marry him," said Steve firmly. "He is not a good man."

"And he's awfully ugly, too, but he's rich, and he's one of the swell set. Ugh! but I do hate him!"

"Why are you going to marry him?"

"Why?" she asked, looking at him with straight, frank surprise. "I've got to. n.o.body else wants me."

The pettish look had pa.s.sed from her face; so also had the world-wise expression. There was something in her present nave frankness that prevented it from seeming bold.

As he looked at her swift images of love and marriage flitted across his brain. Somehow his loneliness was borne in upon him, and with this realization there came as a sudden flash the consciousness that he could marry. Long ago he had put all this one side, and in his grief over the loss of mother and sister it had never once occurred to him that he was free. The knowledge almost overwhelmed him now, and in his bewilderment for the moment he lost sight of his ideal. Like most reticent men, he cherished an ideal. Since meeting Constance Leigh, unconsciously to himself that ideal had grown very like her. But now he was sitting beside a fascinating young girl--for fascinating she was to Steve, even in her brusqueness and plainness of speech; a mere child, as it were, who was without home and without the protection of love and parental care, and as he looked into her eyes, still wet with tears, he felt his heart go out to her.

"Listen to me, Nannie," he said, taking her hand once more. "I am a very lonely man. I need a wife----"

"Come, ducky, come and be killed," flashed through Nannie's mind.

"I think you need me and I'm sure I need you."

"How?" thought Nannie; "frica.s.seed or boiled?"

"If you would let me I would take you and try----"

"Fry, you mean," said Nannie mentally as he hesitated.

Then with a sudden whirl, peculiar to her gusty temperament, she said to herself:

"He's proposing, and I needn't marry that hideous creature!"

She caught her breath and pressed her hands together.

"Oh, if only I could escape from Joe Harding!" she exclaimed.

Something very holy in Steve's nature came up then and changed the man. No longer shy, no longer reserved, he bent toward Nannie without touching her and said:

"My dear, marriage is a gate at once solemn and beautiful. When it is used as a door of escape it opens into a dark forest abounding with terrible wild beasts and hideous crawling things, but if one opens it with love's key, I can't tell you what it leads to, for I have never been there, but I believe it is the gateway to the Elysium fields that lie just on the hither side of heaven."

Nannie looked up into the grave eyes and saw something of tenderness, something of reverence there that was new to her. She had stepped into an unknown world and was awed. As she sat there all mockery and levity faded from her face, and in its place there crept a look of deep admiration and deep respect for this man, and something awoke in her soul.

She said not a word--she had no words for such as this--but by and by she put her hand into Steve's.

"For life, Nannie?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and burst into tears.

V

A lover's ecstasy is ofttimes cut short by the reflection that he has yet to face that awful bugbear--the old folk. There is something terrible about age, it would seem, not only to its possessor, but even to those who must encounter it second hand, and Steve was not without his qualms. Although in his wooing he had not for one moment lost his gentle self-possession, he had entirely forgotten about the ordeal of an interview with Nannie's guardians until she reminded him by saying with an impish chuckle:

"Won't Aunt Frances be happy when she hears of this!"