“With a heart around them, like the ones on this tree?” she asked, pointing to a rude carving on the trunk against which she leaned.

“Yes, with a heart around them,” he repeated.

“But there’s only one name you would carve that way, and put an arrow through it,” she said, meaningly.  “At any rate, a silver arrow.  Oh, maybe you think I haven’t seen her wear it, and blush when I teased her about it.”

Malcolm went on cutting, without an answer.  He had admired Eugenia more than any girl he had ever seen, but somehow this speech jarred on him.  It did not seem exactly ladylike for her to insist on twitting him in such a personal way about his friendship for the Little Colonel. She would never have done such a thing, he felt quite sure.  For a moment he half wished that it was Lloyd sitting on the rock beside him, but Eugenia could be very entertaining when she chose, and she was trying her best now to make an agreeable impression on this handsome boy who seemed so fond of Lloyd.  She wanted to be first in his attentions, and, as usual, she had her way.

“I told you so!” she cried, presently, as a large capital L appeared under Malcolm’s initials.  “I knew you just couldn’t help making an L, and the next one will be an S.”

“I’m not done yet,” he said, with a smiling side-glance at her, and added two more lines, changing the L to an E. An expression of pleasure flashed across her face, as he outlined an F next to it.  It would be something to tell Mollie and Fay and Kell next time she wrote, that the handsomest boy in Kentucky (as she enthusiastically described him to them), with the manners of a Sir Philip Sidney, had left the record of his attachment for her where all might read.

She gave him another smile from under her long black eyelashes, and then looked down with a blush.  He added the heart to the inscription then, and pierced it with an arrow.

While these two played at a game that older children had played before them for many a generation (as the scarred old tree-trunks bore silent witness on every hand), the game of “I spy” went on uproariously behind the columbine rock.  The bonfire blazed higher and higher.  It lighted the cool depths of the darkening woods, and sent dancing shadows across the deep ravines, and presently the picnic feast was spread near by and part of the supper was cooked over its coals.

It was by its weird light that the charades were played, when the feast had been cleared away.  Miss Allison arranged them.  The actors were all little negroes, the funniest, blackest little pickaninnies that ever sung a song or danced a double shuffle.

“It’s Sylvia Gibbs’s family,” explained Miss Allison, to the girls.  “Our circle of King’s Daughters had them under its wing all winter, or they would have starved.  When I discovered what heathen they were, I turned missionary and taught them an hour every Sunday afternoon.  They will do anything for me now, and are such clever little mimics that I know they can act the charades charmingly.  Besides, they will give us a cake-walk afterward, and sing for us like nightingales.”