lled romance? Sighing aloud Ambrose put up his
hand to wipe fresh moisture from his brow, and then coloured.

"I'm afeard you're ill," the girl continued, suddenly solicitous, and
again with a movement that suggested a motherly hen: "You're so quiet
and unlike yourself and yet so nervous and wriggly."

Ambrose yawned. "I slep' out last night, so mebbe I'm tired," he
confessed unadvisedly; then immediately observed the same expression on
Peachy's face that had been brought there by the presence of his muddy
boots in her parlour. Her lips had tightened, though her brow was
smooth; it was that gentle but awful look of the born manager.

"I knowed you'd been doin' something foolish," she stated calmly.
"Anybody else'd remember there is chills and fever out of doors these
spring nights. It's the spring that has set in on you; your blood needs
thinnin'. I'll get you some sassafras tea." Relieved by Ambrose's
revelation, Peachy was for at once starting off, but the young man
caught at her skirts.

Truly the spring was not at present working on him nor did his blood at
this hour require thinning.

"Don't go, Peachy; it ain't sassafras I'm needin', thank you just as
kindly," he said, touched and a bit shamed by her interest. "To tell you
the truth, I'm beginnin' to feel restless wantin' to get back to the
woods ag'in. I'll come back to see you soon," he pleaded, observing that
her head was being shaken with unmoved persistence. Her reply was final:

"You'll do no such thing, Ambrose Thompson; you'll stay right here till
your queerness has wore off. Haven't I been worryin' over you ever since
dinner? Think I'll let you go moonin' off now by yourself with no one to
look after you?" Like young Juno both in her majesty and plenitude,
Peachy did this time move out of sight, leaving her victim greatly
shaken.

In a few moments Ambrose knew that a bitter herb compound would be
poured down his reluctant throat; later he might be placed in bed
between hot blankets and more sweat drawn from his lean frame. Really
there was no limit to Peachy's particular kind of mothering femininity,
and since her intentions were kind--Ambrose knew himself of old--before
kindness he would go down like a struck ten-pin. Already he could feel
the blankets closing in over him, and now in truth he shook with a
chill.

Soon after his tall form arose, and then crouched as it crept forth from
the summer house, stopping only long enough to pin a white pa