"It might be--and it might not be," I answered. "Did you have a good time?"

"The best I ever had--till you spoiled it," she exclaimed. "Oh, the nice, cold brook! Now, let's build the path you spoke about once."

We went back to the maples, where the ground was open, and selected a spot on the edge of the pines where the path would most naturally enter.

Then we let it wind along by the brook, lopping off dead branches which were in the way, and removing one or two small trees. Once we took it across the brook, laying a line of stepping-stones, and out almost to the stone wall, where one could get a momentary glimpse of the road and over the road the blue mountains. Then we bent it in again, crossed the brook once more just above the point where she had waded, and there I rolled a large stone to the edge of the pool--"for you to sit on next time," I explained. Finally we skirted the tamarack swamp, took the path up through the fringe of pines at the southern end of the field crops, and let it come back to the house beside the hayfield wall. When we reached this wall, it was nearly six o'clock.

"Now, let's just walk back through it!" she cried. "To-morrow we can bring the wheelbarrow, can't we, and pick up the litter we've made?"

"I can, at any rate, while you wade," said I.

She shot a little look up into my face. "I guess I'll help," she smiled.

In the low afternoon light we turned about and retraced our steps.

There was but a fringe of pines along the southern wall, and as they were forty-year-old trees here the view both back to the house and over the wall into the next pasture was airy and open. Then the path led through a corner of the tamarack swamp where in wet weather I should have to put down some planks, and where the cattails grew breast high on either side. Then it entered the thick pine grove where a great many of the trees were evidently not more than fifteen or twenty years old and grew very close. The sunlight was shut out, save for daggers of blue between the trunks toward the west. The air seemed hushed, as if twilight were already brooding here. The little brook rippled softly.

As we came to the first crossing, I pointed to the pool, already dark with shadow, and said, "It was wrong of me to play Actaeon to your Diana, but I am not ashamed nor sorry. You were very charming in the dappled light, and you were doing a natural thing, and in among these little pines, perhaps, two friends may be two friends, though they are man and woman."

She did not reply at once, but stood beside me looking at the dark pool and apparently listening to the whisper of the running water against the stepping-stones. Finally she said with a little laugh, "I have always thought that perhaps Diana was unduly severe. Come, we must be moving on."

As the path swung out by the road, we heard a carriage, and stopped, keeping very still, to watch it drive past within twenty feet of us.

The occupants were quite unaware of our existence behind the thin screen of roadside alders.

"How exciting!" she half whispered when the carriage had gone by.

Once more we entered the pines, following the new path over the brook again to the spot where we first had met. There I touched her hand. "Let us wait for the thrush here," I whispered.

I could see her glimmering face lifted to mine. "Why here?" she asked.

"Because it was here we first heard him."

"Oh, forgive me," she answered. "I didn't realize! The path has made it look different, I guess. Forgive me."

She spoke very low, and her voice was grieving. Did it mean so much to her? A sudden pang went through my heart--and then a sudden hot wave of joy--and then sudden doubts. I was silent. So was the thrush. Presently I touched her hand again, gently.

"Come," said I, "we have scared him with our chopping. He will come back, though, and then we will walk down the clean path, making no noise, and hear him sing."

"Nice path," she said, "to come out of your door, through your orchard, and wander up a path by a brook, through your own pines! Oh, fortunate mortal!"

"And find Diana wading in a pool," I added.

Again she shot an odd, questioning look at me, and shook her head. Then she ran into the south room and put the books back on the shelves.

"Which one did you read, Marius or Alice?" I asked.

"Neither," she smiled, as I locked the house behind us.

Chapter XII

SHOPPING AS A DISSIPATION

I thought I could move into my house on the first of June--but I didn't. A rainy day followed the holiday, and in the rain we first set out the roses, which had arrived by freight and which Bert brought over from the village on an early trip, and then tackled the rest of the interior of the house. I wouldn't let Miss Goodwin wash any windows, as that appeared to me to be Mrs. Pillig's job, but we hung my few remaining pictures in the dining-room and hall, set up my old mahogany drop-leaf table for a dining-table--it was large enough for four people, on a pinch--and placed the only two straight-backed chairs I possessed on either side of it.

"Dear, dear!" said I. "I was going to have Mr. and Mrs. Bert and you as my guests at my first meal, but it looks as if you'd have to come alone."

"You could bring in a chair and the piano bench from the south room,"

she smiled. "A more important item seems to be dishes."

"Heavens!" I cried, "I never thought of that! But I've got silver, anyway. I've kept all my mother's silver. It's in a tin box in the bottom drawer of my desk."

"Well, that's something," she admitted. "Have you got tablecloths and napkins and kitchen utensils--to cook with, you know? And have you got some bedding for Mrs. Pillig and son Peter?"

I ruefully shook my head. "I've got a sleeping-bag, though, which Peter could put on the floor. What am I going to do?"

"I think you're going to make a trip to-morrow to the nearest large town, and stock up," she smiled.

"Am I going alone?"

She laughed at me. "No, you helpless child, mamma will go with you."

So the next morning we set off early, provided with a list of necessary articles compiled with Mrs. Bert's a.s.sistance. We tramped over to Bentford and took the train there for a city some seventeen miles away, which we reached about half-past eight. It was a clean, neat little city, with fine old trees on the residence streets, and prosperous, well-stocked shops. The girl was dressed jauntily in blue, and I wore my last year's best suit and a hat and collar. I sniffed the city smell, and declared, "Rather nice, just for a contrast. I've got an all-dressed-up-in-my-best feeling. Have you?"

"It is a lark," she smiled. "I never saw a city from the country point of view before. It seems queer to me--as if I didn't belong in it."

"You don't," said I; "you belong in the country."

She said nothing, but led me into a shop. It was a household-goods shop, and here we looked at dishes first. The woman who waited on us a.s.sumed a motherly air. It began to dawn upon me that she thought we were stocking our little prospective home. I shot a covert glance at the girl. Her eyes were twinkling, her colour high. I said nothing, but pointed to the dinner set I desired.

She laughed. "That's Royal Worcester," she said.

"What of it? I like it."

"Well, then, look at it all you can now," she answered, "for you can't have it."

The clerk laughed. "You see what you're in for, young man," she said, with the familiarity which rather too often characterizes clerks in our semi-rural regions.

I fear I coloured more than Miss Goodwin, which didn't help matters any.

"Please show us something at a reasonable cost," the girl said, with a curious, dignified severity, which was effective.

"That will do, won't it, Mr. Upton?" she presently asked, with pointed emphasis on the formal address, as a pretty set of dishes with a simple pattern on the edge was displayed for $25.

"Admirably," said I. "But I wanted the crimson and gold ones."

"Now for the kitchen things," said she, with her old smile again.