“Yes, yes; that is quite true:  well?” demanded Mr. Brown eagerly.

“Well, sir, a promise is a promise; and, if you demand it now, I will come and live with you, or you can come, and live with me,—­not as your wife, however, but as your sister and child and friend.”

“You will come and live with me, but not marry me!” exclaimed the young man, with a gleam of amusement at the unworldly proposal lighting his dark eyes.

“Yes, sir,” replied Dora, without looking up.

To her infinite astonishment and dismay, she found herself suddenly embraced, and a hearty kiss tingling upon her lips.

“I am sorry if you don’t like it, Dora; but I said I would if you called me ‘sir’ again; and you are so scrupulous about your promises, you cannot wish me to break mine.”

“Then I am afraid I must promise, if you do so again, to go back and ride with Kitty all the rest of the way,” said Dora, as, with heightened color and a decided pout, she drew her left-hand rein so sharply as to wheel Max to the other side of the road.

“Dora, I am afraid you are a little of a coquette, after all!” exclaimed the lover, gazing at her with admiration.

“Oh, no indeed, Mr. Brown!  I wouldn’t be for the world!  I said just what I meant to you.  I always do.”

“But why, then, if you love me well enough to live with me as sister, child, or friend, can’t you also live with me as wife?”

“Because, sir,—­oh, no!  I didn’t mean sir,—­because”—­

“Frank, I told you to call me.”

“Because, Frank, I don’t love you that way.”

The answer was so explicit, so unembarrassed, and so quiet, that, for the first time, Mr. Brown believed it.

“Not love me, Dora, when I love you so much!” exclaimed he in dismay.

“Not love you in a wife way, Frank, but a great deal in every other way.  And then I don’t think we should be happy together if we were married.”

“And why not?” asked the young man, smiling in spite of himself at the quiet opinion.

“Because, as you said, you want me to put my life into your hands, and you will shape it; and you want me to set my feet in your path, and follow it with you; and you want me to trust my soul to you, and you will guide it:  but I could never do that, Mr. Brown; never for any man, I think.  I could never forget that God has given me a life, and a path, and a soul, all my own, and not to be judged except by Him and myself:  and I am afraid I should always be asking if your guiding was in the same direction that I was meant to go; and, if I thought it was not, I should be very unhappy, and should try to live my own life, and not yours; and that would make trouble.”

“Yes, that would make trouble certainly, Dora,” said the chaplain gravely.  “But are you sure that a young and comparatively unlearned woman like yourself would be a better judge of what was right and best than a man of mature years, who has made the care of souls his profession and most earnest duty?”