“The reason I spoke to you about Jim just now,” said Fanny, “was because he's been acting awfully queer lately. I thought perhaps you knew—I know he likes you better than any of the other girls. He says you have some sense, and the others haven't.”

“I guess that must have been before Lydia Orr came to Brookville,” said Ellen, in a hard, sweet voice.

“Yes; it was,” admitted Fanny reluctantly. “Everything seems to be different since then.”

“What has Jim been doing that's any queerer than usual?” inquired Ellen, with some asperity.

Fanny hesitated.

“You won't tell?”

“Of course not, if it's a secret.”

“Cross your heart an' hope t' die?” quoted Fanny from their childhood days.

Ellen giggled.

“Cross m' heart an' hope t' die,” she repeated.

“Well, Jim's been off on some sort of a trip,” said Fanny.

“I don't see anything so very queer about that.”

“Wait till I tell you— You must be sure and not breathe a word, even to your mother; you won't, will you?”

“Fan, you make me mad! Didn't I just say I wouldn't?”

“Well, then; he went with her in the auto; they started about five o'clock in the morning, and Jim didn't get home till after twelve that night.”

Ellen laughed, with studied indifference.

“Pity they couldn't have asked us to go along,” she said. “I'm sure the car's plenty big enough.”

“I don't think it was just for fun,” said Fanny.

“You don't? What for, then?”

“I asked Jim, and he wouldn't tell me.”

“When did you ask him?”

“The morning they went. I came down about half past four: mother doesn't get up as early as that, we haven't much milk to look after now; but I wake up awfully early sometimes, and I'd rather be doing something than lying there wide awake.”

Ellen squeezed Fanny's arm sympathetically. She herself had lost no moments of healthy sleep over Jim Dodge's fancied defection; but she enjoyed imagining herself to be involved in a passionate romance.

“Isn't it awful to lie awake and think—and think, and not be able to do a single thing!” she said, with a tragic gesture.

Fanny bent down to look into Ellen's pretty face.

“Why, Ellen,” she said, “is it as bad as that? I didn't suppose you really cared.”

She clasped Ellen's slender waist closer and kissed her fervently.

Ellen coaxed two shining tears into sparkling prominence on her long lashes.

“Oh, don't mind me, Fan,” she murmured; “but I can sympathize with you, dear. I know exactly how you feel—and to think it's the same girl!”

Ellen giggled light-heartedly:

“Anyway, she can't marry both of them,” she finished.

Fanny was looking away through the boles of the gnarled old trees, her face grave and preoccupied.

“Perhaps I oughtn't to have told you,” she said.

“Why, you haven't told me anything, yet,” protested Ellen. “You're the funniest girl, Fan! I don't believe you know how to—really confide in anybody. If you'd tell me more how you feel about him, you wouldn't care half so much.”

Fanny winced perceptibly. She could not bear to speak of the secret—which indeed appeared to be no secret—she strove daily to bury under a mountain of hard work, but which seemed possessed of mysterious powers of resurrection in the dark hours between sunset and sunrise.

“But there's nothing to—to talk about, Ellen,” she said; and in spite of herself her voice sounded cold, almost menacing.

“Oh, very well, if you feel that way,” retorted Ellen. “But I can tell you one thing—or, I might tell you something; but I guess I won't.”

“Please, Ellen,—if it's about—”

“Well, it is.”

Fanny's eyes pleaded hungrily with the naughty Ellen.

“You haven't finished your account of that interesting pleasure excursion of Jim's and Miss Orr's,” said Ellen. “Isn't it lovely Jim can drive her car? Is he going to be her regular chauffeur? And do you get an occasional joy-ride?”

“Of course not,” Fanny said indignantly. “Oh, Ellen, how can you go on like that! I'm sure you don't care a bit about Jim or me, either.”

“I do!” declared Ellen. “I love you with all my heart, Fan; but I don't know about Jim. I—I might have—you know; but if he's crazy over that Orr girl, what's the use? There are other men, just as good-looking as Jim Dodge and not half so sarcastic and disagreeable.”

“Jim can be disagreeable, if he wants to,” conceded Jim's sister. “When I asked him where he was going with the car so early in the morning—you know he's been bringing the car home nights so as to clean it and fix the engine, till she can get somebody—I was surprised to find him putting in oil and tightening up screws and things, when it was scarcely daylight; and I said so. He wouldn't tell me a thing. ‘You just 'tend to your own knitting, Fan,’ was all he said; ‘perhaps you'll know some day; and then again, perhaps you won't.’”

“And didn't you find out?” cried Ellen, her dark eyes alight with curiosity. “If that doesn't sound exactly like Jim Dodge! But you said you heard him when he came in that night; didn't he tell you anything then?—You don't think they ran off to get married? Oh, Fan!”

“Of course not, you goose! Do you suppose he'd have come back home alone, if it had been anything like that?”

Ellen heaved a sigh of exaggerated relief.

“‘Be still, my heart’!” she murmured.

“No; they went to get somebody from somewhere,” pursued Fanny.

“To get somebody from somewhere,” repeated Ellen impatiently. “How thrilling! Who do you suppose it was?”

Fanny shook her head:

“I haven't the slightest idea.”

“How perfectly funny! ...Is the somebody there, now?”

“I don't know. Jim won't tell me a thing that goes on there. He says if there's anything on top of the earth he absolutely despises it's a gossiping man. He says a gossiping woman is a creation of God—must be, there's so many of 'em; but a gossiping man—he can't find any word in the dictionary mean enough for that sort of a low-down skunk.”

Ellen burst into hysterical laughter.

“What an idea!” she gasped. “Oh, but he's almost too sweet to live, Fan. Somebody ought to take him down a peg or two. Fan, if he proposes to that girl, I hope she won't have him. 'Twould serve him right!”

“Perhaps she won't marry anybody around here,” mused Fanny. “Did you ever notice she wears a thin gold chain around her neck, Ellen?”

Ellen nodded.

“Perhaps there's a picture of somebody on it.”

“I shouldn't wonder.”

Ellen impatiently kicked a big apple out of her way, to the manifest discomfiture of two or three drunken wasps who were battening on the sweet juices.

“I've got to go back to the house,” she said. “Mother'll be looking for me.”

“But, Ellen—”

“Well?”

“You said you knew something—”

Ellen yawned.

“Did I?”

“You know you did, Ellen! Please—”

“'Twasn't much.”

“What was it?”

“Oh, nothing, only I met the minister coming out of Lydia Orr's house one day awhile ago, and he was walking along as if he'd been sent for— Never even saw me. I had a good mind to speak to him, anyway; but before I could think of anything cute to say he'd gone by—two-forty on a plank road!”

Fanny was silent. She was wishing she had not asked Ellen to tell. Then instantly her mind began to examine this new a............