ove. But though
he, I say, were as weak as I, you--ah, you!--are as wise as you are
bewitching; and if I should speak to you from my most craven fear, I
could find but one word of warning."

"Oh, you dear, blind flatterer! And what word would that be?"

"That you are most bewitching when you are wisest."

As Isabel softly laughed she cast a dreaming glance behind, and noticed
that she and Arthur were quite hidden in the flowery undergrowth of the
hill path. They kissed.

"Beloved," said her worshipper, with a clouded smile, as he let her down
from her tiptoes, "do you know you took that as though you were thinking
of something else?"

"Did I? Oh, I didn't mean to."

Such a reply only darkened the cloud. "Of whom were you thinking,
Isabel?"

She blushed. "I was think--thinking--why, I was--I--I was
think--thinking"--she went redder and redder as he went pale--"thinking
of everybody on Bylow Hill. Why--why, dear heart, don't you see? When
you"--

"Oh, enough, enough, my angel! I take the question back!"

"You _made_ me think of everybody, Arthur, you were so sudden. Just
suppose I had done so to you!" They both thought that worthy of a good
laugh. "Next time, dear," added Isabel,--"no, no, no, but--next time,
you mustn't be so sudden. There's no need, you know,"--she blushed
again,--"and I promise you I'll give my whole mind to it! Get me some of
that hawthorn bloom yonder, and let's go back."




IV

AND BRING DOWN THE REMAINDER


This "hill path" was a narrowed continuance of the street, that led
gradually down along the hill's steep face to reach the town and the
river meadows. Godfrey, halting before Ruth and her brother, watched the
blooming hawthorn, over there, bend and shake and straighten and bend
again, above Arthur's unseen hands. Then, glancing furtively back toward
Mrs. Morris, he muttered to Ruth, while Leonard gravely looked out
across the landscape, "I live and learn."

"So we learn to live," was Ruth's playful reply. To her it was painfully
clear

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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