Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/56

 early April breeze, soft with its first evening mist, stirred the budding chestnut branches over their heads, with the breath of a sigh. A robin, as fat as a pullet, called to them from a green lawn, as they passed, a throaty promise of spring.

  had scarcely more than outgrown knickerbockers; his habit of solitude had kept him as clean-minded as the girl herself; and if it was love that had taken him, it was a love that desired only to look at her and listen to her when she was with him, and to dream of her and wish for her when she was away. It was a boy's love that had no burning, a present happiness that had no doubt of the future and no guilt of the past. But it filled his thoughts with pictures of her that came between him and the pages of his books; and he ran from school hours to her like a child to play.

He came to the house for her quite openly, until she noticed some of his school-fellows grinning at him across the street as he walked with her, and she understood that they would tease him, as they had about the photograph. After that she agreed to meet him at the top of the Park, on the road to their ravine. She did not let him come out to her of an evening, because she had heard his aunt say that he must not neglect his studies; and she made him bring his books 