The Monmouth Inquirer

THROUGH THE GOLDEN CORN.

A tangled mass of sunny, golden-brown hair, a pair of mischievous blue eyes peeping from under a big sun hat much the worse for wear.

Under the hedge, his straw hat half covering his face, a tall, slim youth of 18, or thereabouts, is quietly slumbering.

The saucy blue eyes dance as the girl catches sight of him. She creeps with the stealth of a red Indian to the boy's side, and with a piece of feather grass lightly touches the bronzed cheek upturned toward her. A hand goes quickly up to brush away the offending fly; but, as it still persists, the straw hat is pushed back with a muttered objurgation; then, as he catches sight of the old serge skirt, the dark face grows tender.

"Mollie! by all that's wonderful!" he exclaims delightedly.

"Yes, Mollie, and no one else!" says that young person, calmly. She even condescends to lean comfortably against the broad tweed-covered shoulder.

"You see, I didn't feel like lessons, and it was your last day at home, and so I just gave Miss Browne the slip!" she finishes gleefully.

"You darling! Did you really come to see me?"

"Why, of course I did! You silly boy, aren't you going away for two years, and haven't we always been chums?"

"When I come back, in two years, Mollie, will you marry me?"

The girl gazes at him for a moment in mute surprise, and then—conduct entirely unworthy of a heroine—goes off into peal after peal of merry, ringing laughter; but as she sees the look of pained surprise on her companion's face, she subsides into suppressed giggles.

"O, Phil! I'm so sorry!" she gasps at last, "but it did sound so funny! Marry you? O, dear! dear!"

Then, a sudden thought striking her:

"Have you been making love to me all this afternoon?" she queries.

"Rather," he answers; then, irrelevantly, "What a baby you are, Mollie!"

"Dear me!" she remarks interestedly. "So that's making love; well”—candidly—“I rather like it, and”—the bright head nestling against the broad shoulder—“you can go on!"

Which he does, till a shrill whistle and Bob Heatherleigh's abrupt appearance through the hedge put a summary end to their tete-a-tete.

A big, wide room, with the bare look inseparable from an Indian bungalow.

Stretched full length in a cane chair, the bronzed face darker by contrast with the white linen suit, is Philip Wentworth, two years older, five years older-looking; but, for all that, little changed from the boy-lover of that sunny summer afternoon.

He takes up a society paper which the English mail has just brought, and presently his eyes fall on this paragraph:

"The news of Lord Hartley's engagement to Miss Heatherleigh will surprise few. His devotion to his fair fiancee has been so patent since her appearance in society. On dit this is the outcome of a youthful love affair. We hear the marriage is to take place in the spring."

"Hallo, Wentworth! I thought you were in India!"

"Just home on leave. How d'ye do, Hartley?"

And the two men, with all young England's horror of anything approaching a display of feeling, exchange polite greetings, though they have ever cordially disliked each other, and one's heart, at all events, is bitter with love and jealousy.

"I suppose nearly every one has left town?" queries Phil languidly.

"No, there are a good many left—parliament, you know”—vaguely.

"Your old friends the Heatherleighs are here."

"Ah!" says Phil, quietly.

"I believe I am to congratulate you?"

Hartley glances at him curiously. Perhaps the repressed tone in the deep voice strikes him. He makes a little smiling bow, then asks:

"See you to-night at Stratton house?"

"Probably I may as well be there as the club," is the uninterested reply, although under the quiet exterior the man's heart is beating fiercely at the thought of meeting his little love again.

Philip is standing near the door when the Heatherleighs are announced.

Mrs. Heatherleigh's tall, stately figure comes first, and then—can this be Mollie, his little Mollie—the madcap in the old serge skirt and battered sun hat, this auburn-haired vision in cloudy white draperies, who is smiling over her shoulder at Lord Hartley? And then, Phil's momentary doubts being quickly dispelled, he turns sadly and bitterly away.

Later in the evening Mrs. Heatherleigh sends him in search of Mollie.

He finds her sitting under a big palm, listening languidly to the ponderous compliments of their host.

They meet—coldly, strangely; meet and exchange the polite nothings of society, Philip wildly angry that the girl wears such an apparently unmoved demeanor.

As they turn to leave the conservatory one of the big Japanese lanterns suddenly catches fire, and the blazing fragments fall on the girl's light dress.

Instantly she is in flames!

Philip, quick as thought, has torn down one of the heavy velvet hangings, flung it round the slight form, and has crushed out the flames with his hands.

Then, as Mrs. Heatherleigh rushes forward, he gives the girl into her arms and hurries from the house.

It is a week later, and Philip Wentworth is again on the eve of leaving England.

The Heatherleighs left town the day after the accident. Philip had pleaded his approaching departure as reason for refusing to visit them—he dared not trust his self-control if he were thrown in daily companionship with Mollie.

But Bob, inspired with admiration of his sister's preserver, concocted a wondrous epistle, an epistle that made Phil dive into "Bradshaw," risk his neck in a mad chase after an already moving train, and alight some two hours afterward at the tiny rustic station three miles from Heatherleigh court.

Two sentences in Bob's letter ring in his ears: "Hartley has gone to the Rockies," and "Mollie was awfully vexed you wouldn't come down. She hasn't got over her fright yet, I suppose; does nothing but moon about in the cornfield by the wood—likes to be alone, she says!"

The sun is blazing on scarlet poppies and golden corn, the depths of the woody background are cool and green as ever; but the pretty white-clad figure sitting, chin on hand, in pensive attitude, is changed from the merry child of two years ago.

"Mollie," he says, softly. The girl starts, the big eyes widen; then as she rises to find the object of her thoughts so close that he might easily touch her from chin to brow she flushes rosy.

"You are mine, Mollie—mine at last!"

"Did you think I belonged to anybody else, then?" the girl questions, a gleam of the old saucy light in her blue eyes.

"I read the announcement of your engagement in the papers," he says slowly.

"And not the contradiction?" Mollie asks, surprisedly.

Phil shakes his head: he is too generous to tell her how his old rival encouraged his mistake.—Answers.