She pressed closer against him, and tiptoeing so as to raise her mouth to his ear, she whispered:  “I always liked you better than anybody else in the world, Frank.  I love you!  I love you!”

For the moment he could not realise his own good fortune.  He could do nothing but look into her eyes.  It was her reproach for years afterwards that she had to kiss him first.

“I suppose it had to come, Frank,” she said.  “I fought all I could, but it didn’t seem any use!”

“It was inevitable,” he returned solemnly.  “God made you for me, and me for you!”

“Amen,” she said, and in an ecstasy of abandonment whispered again:  “I love you, Frank.  I love you!”

FFRENCHES FIRST

I suppose if I had been a hero of romance, instead of an ordinary kind of chap, I would have steamed in with the Tallahassee, fired a gun, and landed in state, instead of putting on my old clothes and sneaking into the county on an automobile.  However, I did my little best, so far as making a date with Babcock was concerned, and as it turned out in the end I dare say the hero of romance wouldn’t have managed it much better himself.  It was late when I got into Forty Fyles (as the village was called), and put up at one of those quaint, low-raftered, bulging old inns which still remain, thank Heaven, here and there, in the less travelled parts of England.  If I were dusty and dirty when I arrived, you ought to have seen me the next day after a two-hours’ job with the differential gears.  By the time I had got the trouble to rights, and had puffed up and down the main street to make assurance sure and astonish the natives (who came out two hundred strong and cheered), I was as frowsy, unkempt, and dilapidated an American as ever drove a twelve H.P.  Panhard through the rural lanes of Britain.  Indeed, I was so shocked at my own appearance when I looked at myself in the glass (such a wiggly old glass that showed one in streaks like bacon) that I went down to the draper’s and tried to buy a new set out.  But as they had nothing except cheap tripper suits for pigmies (I stood six feet in my stockings and had played full back at college) and fishermen’s clothes of an ancient Dutch design, I forebore to waste my good dollars in making a guy of myself, and decided to remain as I was.

Then, as I was sitting in the bar and asking the potman the best way to get to Castle Fyles, it suddenly came over me that it was the Fourth of July, and that, recreant as I was, I had come near forgetting the event altogether.  I started off again down the main street to discover some means of raising a noise, and after a good deal of searching I managed to procure several handfuls of strange whitey fire-crackers the size of cigars and a peculiar red package that the shopkeeper called a “Haetna Volcano.”  He said that for four and eightpence one couldn’t find its match in Lunnon itself, and obligingly took off twopence when I pointed out Vesuvius hadn’t a fuse.  With the crackers in my pocket and the volcano under my arm I set forth in the pleasant summer morning to walk to Castle Fyles, having an idea to rest by the way and celebrate the Fourth in the very heart of the hereditary enemy.