"Oh, the dust--I know!"

Mr. Ramy stretched one of his blunt-fingered hands toward her.
"I wisht you'd take me."

Still Ann Eliza did not understand. She rose hesitatingly
from her seat, pushing aside the basket of buttons which lay
between them; then she perceived that Mr. Ramy was trying to take
her hand, and as their fingers met a flood of joy swept over her.
Never afterward, though every other word of their interview was
stamped on her memory beyond all possible forgetting, could she
recall what he said while their hands touched; she only knew that
she seemed to be floating on a summer sea, and that all its waves
were in her ears.

"Me--me?" she gasped.

"I guess so," said her suitor placidly. "You suit me right
down to the ground, Miss Bunner. Dat's the truth."

A woman passing along the street paused to look at the shop-
window, and Ann Eliza half hoped she would come in; but after a
desultory inspection she went on.

"Maybe you don't fancy me?" Mr. Ramy suggested,
discountenanced by Ann Eliza's silence.

A word of assent was on her tongue, but her lips refused it.
She must find some other way of telling him.