“You will forget me,” she said.  It was half a reproach, half a command.

Again he shook his head in denial.

“Do you remember the queen who claimed she had Calais stamped on her heart?  Well, open mine a hundred years from now and you’ll read Carlotta.”

“But won’t you ever marry?” pursued Carlotta with youth’s insistence on probing wounds to the quick.

“I don’t know.  Probably,” he added honestly.  “A man is a poor stick in this world without a home and kiddies.  If I do it will be a long time yet though.  It will be many a year before I see anybody but you, no matter where I look.”

“But I am horrid—­selfish, cowardly, altogether horrid.”

“Are you?” smiled Phil.  “I wonder.  Anyway I love you.  Come on, dear.  We’ll have to hurry.  The car is nearly due.”

And, as twilight settled down over the valley like a great bird brooding over its nest, Philip and Carlotta went down from the mountain.

CHAPTER IV

A BOY WHO WASN’T AN ASS BUT BEHAVED LIKE ONE

Baccalaureate services being over and the graduates duly exhorted to the wisdom of the ages, the latter were for a time permitted to alight from their lofty pedestal in the public eye and to revert temporarily to the comfortable if less exalted state of being plain every day human girls.

While Philip and Carlotta went up on the heights fondly believing they were settling their destinies forever, Tony had been enjoying an afternoon en famille with her uncle and her brother Ted.

Suddenly she looked at her watch and sprang up from the arm of her uncle’s chair on which she had been perched, chattering and content, for a couple of hours.

“My goodness!  It is most four o’clock.  Dick will be here in a minute.  May I call up the garage and ask them to send the car around?  I’m dying for a ride.  We can go over to South Hadley and get the twins, if you’d like.  I’m sure they must have had enough of Mt.  Holyoke by this time.”

“Car’s out of commission,” grunted Ted from behind his sporting sheet.

“Out of commission?  Since when?” inquired Doctor Holiday.  “It was all right when you took it to the garage last night.”

“I went out for a joy ride and had a smash up,” explained his nephew nonchalantly, and still hidden behind the newspaper.

“Oh Ted!  How could you when you know we want to use the car every minute?” There was sharp dismay and reproach in Tony’s voice.

“Well, I didn’t smash it on purpose, did I?” grumbled her brother, throwing down the paper.  “I’m sorry, Tony.  But it can’t be helped now.  You’d better be thankful I’m not out of commission myself.  Came darn near being.”

“Oh Ted!” There was only concern and sympathy in his sister’s exclamation this time.  Tony adored her brothers.  She went over to Ted now, scrutinizing him as if she half expected to see him minus an arm or a leg.  “You weren’t hurt?” she begged reassurance.