THE RUNAWAY ROAD
her most. The mirror made a fine frame for the whole quaint room, with its dingy landscape wall paper from which the scarlet petticoat of a shep herdess or the vivid green of a garland stood out with cheerful crudity. The battered, blackened fireplace was lurid here and there with gleams of copper kettles, and a huge gray cat purred comfortably in the curving seat of a sun-baked rocking-chair.
It was a good picture to take home in your mind for remembrance, when walls should be brick and rooms ornate and life hackneyed, and the Girl shut her eyes for a second, experimentally, to fix the vision in her consciousness.
When she opened her eyes again the Man was struggling through the doorway dragging a small, heavy trunk.
"Oh, don't go yet!" he exclaimed. "Here are a lot of your things in this trunk. I brought them in to show you."
And he dragged the trunk to the middle of the room and knelt down on the floor and commenced to unlock it.
"My things?" cried the Girl in amazement, and ran across the room and sat down on the floor beside him. "My things?"
There was a funny little twist to the Man's mouth that never relaxed all the time he was tink-
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