in a skiff almost every day." He did
not add that every day his journey had been to the upper water near
Madeira Place; but he might have.

"Once or twice I have seen you." She did not add that she had stood at
her window, behind a partly drawn blind, gazing after him through slow
tears; but she might have. "What a very long time indeed since we saw
each other,--and talked to each other!"

"Oh, about two thousand years," he answered with careful calculation.

"I wonder if you remember the ride across country into the sunset?"

Should he ever forget it? Then the spring wind blew up to them from off
the Di with a coolish, dampening touch. "What do you hear from Elsie?"
he asked, heeding the wind's touch.

"She is in love. What do you hear from Mr. Carington?"

"That same. It seems very right and fit. Carington and Elsie are well
mated. The wedding will happen in July. Carry wants me to come back to
him for it."

She was stirring the meal and water together briskly, with her back half
turned to him. At his words she stopped in her work and put her hand up
to her heart with her strange little pushing gesture, as though she must
push her heart down. "And you will go, I suppose?"

"No, I shan't go."

She took her hand down and laughed lightly. He could not hear the joyful
relief in the laugh, but she could. "My, but you have become attached to
Redbud, haven't you? Hasn't it been lonely for you here?"

"Well, the cherry hat little girl up above Sowfoot has been a comfort.
And then I've studied a heap."

"Studied what?"

"Mizzourah!"

"Redbud and Sowfoot are good teachers," she laughed; then her face
sobered quickly, "but I don't think you should stay down here by the
river when you are ill," she said. Her sweet, wistful interest was
balsamic to him. For a moment he tried to look sicker than he was.

"Oh, it's nothing, nothing," he protested in a gone voice.

"Yes, it is something," she had the corn-dodgers going over a slow fire
and was dubiously regarding a second skillet that he had brought her.
"Don't you ever try water for it?" she interrupted herself to ask. He
admitted that he was not as careful of the skillet as he should be, and
she went back to her first anxiety, "Why do you stay here when you are
ill?"

"Oh, I'm not ill a bit, not really." He had forgotten to be ill.
Regarding her dreamily from his bench he was wishing that the moment
could be eternity, that he could be hungry forever and that for