200 The Little Minister

entreated ; “at least tell me where your encamp-
ment is.”

“You have warned me against imprudence,”
she said.

“JT want,’ Gavin continued, earnestly, “to
know your people, your father and mother.”

SOA Thy: 8

“‘ Because,” he answered, stoutly, “I like their
daughter.”

At that Babbie’s fingers played on one of the
pans, and, for the moment, there was no more
badinage in her.

“You are a good man,” she said, abruptly ;
“but you will never know my parents.”

“ Are they dead?”

“They may be; I cannot tell.”

“This is all incomprehensible to me.”

“T suppose it is. I never asked any one to
understand me.”

“Perhaps not,” said Gavin, excitedly; “ but
the time has come when I must know everything
of you that is to be known.”

Babbie receded from him in quick fear.

“You must never speak to me in that way
again,” she said, in a warning voice.

“In what way?”

Gavin knew what way very well, but he
thirsted to hear in her words what his own
had implied. She did not choose to oblige
him, however.

“You will never understand me,” she said.
“J daresay I might be more like other people
now, if—if I had been brought up differently.
Not,” she added, passionately, “that I want to