Then... "'Kate,' I said, as I held the noble girl's gloved
hand in mine a moment. She looked me in the face with
the full, frank, fearless gaze of a sister.
"'Yes?' she answered.
"'Kate,' I repeated, 'do you know what I was thinking of
when I held the line while you were half way down the
cliff?'
"'No,' she murmured, while a flush suffused her cheek.
"'I was thinking, Kate,' I said, 'that if the rope broke
I should be very sorry.'
"'Edward!' she exclaimed.
"I clasped her in my arms.
"'Shall I make a confession,' said Kate, looking up
timidly, half an hour later, as I tenderly unclasped the
noble girl from my encircling arms, ...'I was thinking
the same thing too.'"
So Kate and Edward had their day and then, as Tennyson
says, they "passed," or as less cultivated people put
it, "they were passed up in the air."
As the years went by they failed to please. Kate was a
great improvement upon Madeline. But she wouldn't do.
The truth was, if one may state it openly, Kate wasn't
TOUGH enough. In fact she wasn't tough at all. She turned
out to be in reality just as proper and just as virtuous
as Madeline.
So, too, with the Air-and-Grass Hero.
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