to her breast. "Nelson! Oh, thank heaven! Thank heaven!"
"What for?" he asked gruffly; but he was touched. Nay, he wavered. Once more they seemed to care for the same things; once more she seemed adorable.
In her agitation she spoke exactly what she felt and much too straight from the heart. "What for?" she cried. "Why, we thought you were drowned and everybody in the whole place would blame us for it! Everybody'd 'a' said I was to blame; I know they would!"
The revelation was complete and so was Nelson's disillusionment. He tried to pull his hands from her; but in the happiness of her great relief she held them but the tighter, and then, in his renewed revulsion he forgot to be a gentleman.
"So that's all you were thinking about! It didn't matter a darn thing about my getting drowned and my father and mother and a few things like that!" He used a terrible word. His great-grandfather, under similar circumstances, might have caused a lady to faint by addressing to her the epithet, "heartless coquette." Nelson's generation has less care of its English. "Leggo my hands," he said. "You Prom-Trotter!"
Staggered, she released him; and then slowly, her
