Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/166

156 "I know that; but I can have her at school there, and see her every day; and we can keep her with us here, this winter, and she 'll get to loving me first-rate before spring."

"Well, as for that, the little beggar loves you enough already,—that 's easy to see. It 's a case of love at first sight, on both sides," I said, carelessly. Jim flushed.

"Look here, Will," he said, very soberly, "you must n't speak that way. We 'll quarrel as sure as fate, old boy, if you do it; you must remember that from this day, Ally is just the same as if she were my own sister, blood-born. And is n't it strange, too, that Alice was my mother's name? That 's only one more of the strange things about it all. Supposing, for instance, we 'd gone the other road, as we came so near doing, we should n't have got here till day after to-morrow, and she 'd have been in their infernal poor-house by that time, I dare say; is n't this what you might call Fate with a vengeance? I don't wonder the old Pagans believed in it as they did. I believe I 'm half Pagan myself."

"Now, Jim," I interrupted, "don't go off into the classic ages. If you are really going to be such a"

"Say fool, and be done with it, Will; I don't mind," he laughed.

"Well; if you 're really going to be such a fool is to adopt 'Ally,' and really want to keep her