“Bless you, child,” cried George, mischievously, and leading the way down the path, “I can’t climb anymore than a pumpkin.  You will have to go back with him after it, or let it wave as a memento of his gallantry on your behalf.”

“If I can only manage to throw them together without any embarrassing third parties present, the ridiculous restraint they are under will soon vanish,” he thought; and so he hastened his steps.  The rest trooped after him, while Stanhope made his way with difficulty on the opposite bank, where there was no path.  His progress therefore was slow; and Elsie saw that if she did not linger he would be left behind.  Common politeness forbade this, and so she soon found herself alone, carrying his overcoat on one bank, and he keeping pace with her on the other.  She comforted herself at first with the thought that with the brawling, deafening stream between them, there would be no chance for embarrassing conversation.  But soon her sympathies became aroused, as she saw him toilsomely making his way over the rocks and through the tangled thickets:  and as she could not speak to him, she smiled her encouragement so often that she felt it would be impossible to go back to her old reserve.

Stanhope now came to a little opening in the brush.  The cleared ground sloped evenly down to the stream, and its current was divided by a large rock.  He hailed the opportunity here offered with delight, for he was very anxious to speak to her before they should join the others.  So he startled Elsie by walking out into the clearing, away from the stream.

“Well, I declare; that’s cool, to go and leave me alone without a word,” she thought.

But she was almost terror-stricken to see him turn and dart to the torrent like an arrow.  With a long flying leap, he landed on the rock in the midst of the stream, and then, without a second’s hesitation, with the impetus already acquired, sprang for the solid ground where she stood, struck it, wavered, and would have fallen backward into the water had not she, quick as thought, stepped forward and given him her hand.

“You have saved me from a ducking, if not worse,” he said, giving the little rescuing hand a warm pressure.

“Oh!” exclaimed she, panting, “please don’t do any more dreadful things.  I shall be careful how I make any wishes in your hearing again.”

“I am sorry to hear you say that,” he replied.  And then there was an awkward silence.

Elsie could think of nothing better than to refer to the handkerchief they had left behind.

“Will you wait for me till I run and get it?” he asked.

“I will go back with you, if you will permit me,” she said timidly.

“Indeed, I could not ask so much of you as that.”

“And yet you could about the same as risk your neck to gratify a whim of mine,” she said more gratefully than she intended.

“Please do not think,” he replied earnestly, “that I have been practicing cheap heroics.  As I said, I was a country boy, and in my early home thought nothing of doing such things.”  But even the brief reference to that vanished home caused him to sigh deeply, and Elsie gave him a wistful look of sympathy.