again as the folks think I better stay up there for a visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle Purvs home in Chicago after the trip is over.  But I will think of you all the time and you must think of me every minute and believe your own dearie she will never no not for one second be false.  So tell Sade and Alb good-by for me and do not be false to me any more than I would be to you and it will not be long till nothing more will interrupt our sweet friendship.

As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into irreparable fragments, but he did this slowly, and without experiencing any of the revulsion created by Milla’s former missive.

He was melancholy, aggrieved that she should treat him so.

Chapter X

He never saw her again.  She sent him a “picture postal” from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, which his father disengaged from the family mail, one morning at breakfast, and considerately handed to him without audible comment.  Upon it was written, "Oh, you Ramsey!" This was the last of Milla.

Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some revelations.  “Milla did like you,” said Sadie.  “After that time you jumped in the creek to save her she liked you better than any boy in town, and I guess if it wasn’t for her cousin Milt up in Chicago she would of liked you the best anywhere.  I guess she did, anyway, because she hadn’t seen him for about a year then.

“Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in everything that was goin’ on, only she made me promise on my word of honour I wouldn’t even tell Albert.  They didn’t get any wire from her uncle about the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped on the train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to go on the trip, and everything.  You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple of times in school before she came in our class and I don’t exactly know how old she is and she don’t look old yet, but I’m pretty sure she’s at least eighteen, and she might be over.  Her mother kept tellin’ her all the time you were just a kid, and didn’t have anything to support her on, and lots of things like that.  I didn’t think such a great deal of this Milt’s looks, myself, but he’s anyway twenty-one years old, and got a good position, and all their family seem to think he’s just fine!  It wasn’t his father that took in the touring car on debt, like she said she was writing to you; it was Milt himself.  He started out in business when he was only fifteen years old, and this trip he was gettin’ up for his father and mother and Milla was the first vacation he ever took.  Well, of course she wouldn’t like my tellin’ you, but I can’t see the harm of it, now everything’s all over.”

“All—­all over?  You mean Milla’s going to be—­to be married?”

“She already is,” said Sadie.  “They got married at her Aunt Jess and Uncle Purv’s house, up in Chicago, last Thursday.  Yes, sir; that quiet little Milla’s a regular old married woman by this time, I expect, Ramsey!”