“I see you have been successful,” she replied.  “Allow me to congratulate you.”

“Thank you.  I hear you are coming to ’Varsity this fall, Miss Woodburn.  Don’t you think it quite an undertaking?  I’m sure I wish you joy of the hard work.”

“Why, I hope you are not wearying of your course in the middle of it, Mr. Mayfair.  It is only two years till you will have your B.A.”

“Two years’ hard work, though; and, to tell the truth, a B.A. has lost its charms for me.  I long to devote my life more fully to literature.  That is my first ambition, you know, and I seem to be wasting so much time.”

“You can hardly call time spent that way wasted,” she answered.  “You will write all the better for it by and by.”

Then they plunged into one of their old-time literary talks of authors and books and ambitions.  Beth loved these talks.  There was no one else in Briarsfield she could discuss these matters with like Clarence.  She was noticing meanwhile how much paler he looked than when she saw him last, but she admired him all the more.  There are some women who love a man all the more for being delicate.  It gives them better opportunities to display their womanly tenderness.  Beth was one of these.

“By the way, I mustn’t forget my errand,” Clarence exclaimed after a long chat.

He handed her a dainty little note, an invitation to tea from his sister Edith.  Beth accepted with pleasure.  She blushed as he pressed her hand in farewell, and their eyes met.  That look and touch of his went very deep—­deeper than they should have gone, perhaps; but the years will tell their tale.  She watched him going down the hill-side in the afternoon sunshine, then fell to dreaming again.  What if, after all, she should not always stay alone with daddy?  If someone else should come—­And she began to picture another study where she should not have to write alone, but there should be two desks by the broad windows looking out on the lake, and somebody should—­

“Beth!  Beth! come and set the tea-table.  My hands is full with them cherries.”

Beth’s dream was a little rudely broken by Mrs. Martin’s voice, but she complacently rose and went into the house.

Mrs. Martin was a small grey-haired woman, very old-fashioned; a prim, good old soul, a little sharp-tongued, a relic of bygone days of Canadian life.  She had been Dr. Woodburn’s housekeeper ever since Beth could remember, and they had always called her “Aunt Prudence.”

“What did that gander-shanks of a Mayfair want?” asked the old lady with a funny smile, as Beth was bustling about.

“Oh, just come to bring an invitation to tea from Edith.”

Dr. Woodburn entered as soon as tea was ready.  He was the ideal father one meets in books, and if there was one thing on earth Beth was proud of it was “dear daddy.”  He was a fine, broad-browed man, strikingly like Beth, but with hair silvery long before its time.  His eyes were like hers, too, though Beth’s face had a little shadow of gloom that did not belong to the doctor’s genial countenance.