“I’m afraid,” she whispered, crying again.  “I do not wish to be left alone here.  A snake might come, or a tramp.”

He sat down beside her.  “You’re nervous.  I’ll stay with you until you feel better.  Some one may come this way, but it isn’t likely.  A man I passed on the road a ways back told me to cut through the hickory grove and I would save a mile of travel.  That’s how I happened to come through the woods, and find you.”  He smiled a little, and Prudence, remembering the nature of her accident, flushed.  Then, being Prudence, she laughed.

“It was my own fault.  I had no business to go coasting down like that.  But the mule was so stationary.  It never occurred to me that he contemplated moving for the next century at least.  He was a bitter disappointment.”  She looked down the roadside where the mule was contentedly grazing, with never so much as a sympathetic glance toward his victim.

“I’m afraid your bicycle is rather badly done up.”

“Oh,—­whatever will Mattie Moore say to me?  It’s borrowed.  Oh, I see now, that it was just foolish pride that made me unwilling to ride during decent hours.  What a dunce I was,—­as usual.”

He looked at her curiously.  This was beyond his comprehension.

“The bicycle belongs to Mattie Moore.  She lives across the street from the parsonage, and I wanted to ride.  She said I could.  But I was ashamed to ride in the daytime, for fear some of the members would think it improper for a girl of the parsonage, and so I got up at six o’clock this morning to do it on the sly.  Somehow I never can remember that it is just as bad to do things when you aren’t seen as when you are.  It doesn’t seem so bad, does it?  But of course it is.  But I never think of that when I need to be thinking of it.  Maybe I’ll remember after this.”  She was silent a while.  “Fairy’ll have to get breakfast, and she always gets father’s eggs too hard.”  Silence again.  “Maybe papa’ll worry.  But then, they know by this time that something always does happen to me, so they’ll be prepared.”

She turned gravely to the young man beside her.  He was looking down at her, too.  And as their eyes met, and clung for an instant, a slow dark color rose in his face.  Prudence felt a curious breathlessness,—­caused by her hurting ankle, undoubtedly.

“My name is Prudence Starr,—­I am the Methodist minister’s oldest daughter.”

“And my name is Jerrold Harmer.”  He was looking away into the hickory grove now.  “My home is in Des Moines.”

“Oh, Des Moines is quite a city, isn’t it?  I’ve heard quite a lot about it.  It isn’t so large as Chicago, though, of course.  I know a man who lives in Chicago.  We used to be great chums, and he told me all about the city.  Some day I must really go there,—­when the Methodists get rich enough to pay their ministers just a little more salary.”  Then she added thoughtfully, “Still, I couldn’t go even