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“Neat but not gaudy; I’m a fright, but I deserve it, and it’s better than being a peacock.”

Kitty had time to feel a little friendless and forlorn, sitting there alone as twilight fell, and amused herself by wondering if Fletcher would come to inquire about her, or show any further interest in her; yet when the sound of a manly tramp approached, she trembled lest it should be the victim of the fatal facing. The door opened, and with a sigh of relief she saw Jack come in, bearing a pair of new gloves in one hand and a great bouquet of June roses in the other.

“How good of you to bring me these! They are more refreshing than oceans of tea. You know what I like, Jack; thank you very much” cried Kitty, sniffing at her roses with grateful rapture.

“And you know what I like,” returned Jack, with an approving glance at the altered figure before him.

“I’ll never do so any more,” murmured Kitty, wondering why she felt bashful all of a sudden, when it was only cousin Jack.

“Now put on your gloves, dear, and come out and hear the music: your train doesn’t go for two hours yet, and you mustn’t mope here all that time,” said Jack, offering his second gift.

“How did you know my size?” asked Kitty, putting on the gloves in a hurry; for though Jack had called her “dear” for years, the little word had a new sound to-night.

“I guessed,–no, I didn’t, I had the old ones with me; they are no good now, are they?” and too honest to lie, Jack tried to speak carelessly, though he turned red in the dusk, well knowing that the dirty little gloves were folded away in his left breast-pocket at that identical moment.

“Oh, dear, no! these fit nicely. I’m ready, if you don’t mind going with such a fright,” said Kitty, forgetting her dread of seeing people in her desire to get away from that room, because for the first time in her life she wasn’t at ease with Jack.

“I think I like the little gray moth better than the fine butterfly,” returned Jack, who, in spite of his invitation, seemed to find “moping” rather pleasant.

“You are a rainy-day friend, and he isn’t,” said Kitty, softly, as she drew him away.

Jack’s only answer was to lay his hand on the little white glove resting so confidingly on his arm, and, keeping it there, they roamed away into the summer twilight.

Something had happened to the evening and the place, for both seemed suddenly endowed with uncommon beauty and interest. The dingy old houses might have been fairy palaces, for anything they saw to the contrary; the dusty walks, the trampled grass, were regular Elysian fields to them, and the music was the music of the spheres, though they found themselves “Right in the middle of the boom, jing, jing.” For both had made a little discovery,–no, not a little one, the greatest and sweetest man and woman can make. In the sharp twinge of jealousy which the sight of Kitty’s flirtation with Fletcher gave him, and the delight he found in her after conduct, Jack discovered how much he loved her. In the shame, gratitude, and half sweet, half bitter emotion that filled her heart, Kitty felt that to her Jack would never be “only cousin Jack” any more. All the vanity, coquetry, selfishness, and ill-temper of the day seemed magnified to heinous sins, for now her only thought was, “seeing these faults, he can’t care for me. Oh, I wish I was a better girl!”

She did not say “for his sake,” but in the new humility, the ardent wish to be all that a woman should be, little Kitty proved how true her love was, and might have said with Portia,–

“For myself alone, I would not be
Ambitious in my wish; but, for you,
I would be trebled twenty times myself;
A thousand times more fair,
Ten thousand times more rich.”