“Why did you come to—­to see me, Hettie?” questioned Harriet.

“Because,” was the slow-coming reply, “I thought maybe he had wrote back to you.”

“He has never written to me, Hettie—­never a line.”

The face of the girl brightened.  “Then you ain’t engaged to him, are you, Harriet?”

“The idea! of course not.”

“Oh, I’m mighty glad of that,” exclaimed the visitor.  “You see, I’m such a fool about him I got jealous.  Oh, Harriet, there ain’t no use in me tryin’ to deceive myself; I know he would marry you at the drop of a hat if you’d have him.  I know that, and still I am crazy about him.  I ain’t much to blame, Harriet, if I am foolish.  He made me so, an’ ’most any pore, lonely girl like I am would care for a good-looking man like he is.  Oh, Harriet, it is awfully humiliating to have to think it, but I believe the reason he treats me like he does is that I showed him too plainly how much I loved him.”

“I did not suspect till the other day,” said Harriet, to avoid that point, “that he was paying you any particular attention.  Mother told me he often drove you out home.”

“Oh, la, that ain’t a circumstance, Harriet!  He used to come out home mighty nigh every day or night.  Pa an’ ma think he is a regular prince.  You know he swore pa out of a big whiskey scrape in Atlanta, and since then pa and him has been mighty thick.  They thought all along that Toot wanted to marry me, and it made ’em mighty proud, and then it began to look like he was settin’ up to you.  That’s why I quit staying here, Harriet.  I couldn’t be around you so much and know—­or think, as I did, that he was beginning to love you.”

“I don’t think,” protested Harriet, “that he was ever deeply interested in me.  You must not think that.  In fact, I believe now, Hettie, that you and he will be happily married some day—­if he ever gets out of his trouble.”

Hettie drew in her breath quickly and held it, raising a glad glance to the speaker’s face.

“Why do you think so, Harriet?—­oh, you are just saying this to make me feel better.”

Harriet deliberated for a moment, then she said:  “He was here the night they run him off—­the night they all took Mr. Westerfelt out.  Mother and I had a long talk with him.  Mother talked straight to him about flirting with you, and told him what a good, nice girl you were, and—­”

“Oh, did she, Harriet?  I could hug her for it!”

“Yes, and he talked real nice about you, too, and admitted he had acted wrong.  Hettie, I believe in time that he’ll come back and ask you to marry him.  I believe that in the bottom of my heart.”

The countenance of the visitor was now aglow with hope.