y for the printers,
they went critically over the work together.

So the hours flew past on busy wings, and the days of the springtime
drew toward summer. The tender green of the new-born leaves and grasses
changed to a stronger, deeper tone. The air, which had been so filled
with the freshness and newness of bursting buds and rain-blessed soil,
and all the quickening life of tree and bush and plant, now carried the
perfume of strongly growing things,--the feel of maturing life.

To Brian, the voices of the river brought a fuller, deeper message, with
a subtle undertone of steady and enduring purpose.

From the beginning, Betty Jo established for herself the habit of
leaving her work at the typewriter in the afternoons, and going for
a walk over the hills. Quite incidentally, at first, her walks
occasionally led her by way of the clearing where Brian was at work
with his ax, and it followed, naturally, that as the end of the day drew
near, the two would go together down the mountain-side to the evening
meal. But long before the book was finished, the little afternoon visit
and the walk together at the day's close had become so established as a
custom that they both accepted it as a part of their day's life; and to
Brian, at least, it was an hour to which he looked forward as the most
delightful hour of the twenty-four. As for Betty Jo,--well, it was
really Betty Jo who established the custom and developed it to that
point where it was of such importance.

Auntie Sue was too experienced from her life-long study of boys and
girls not to observe the deepening of the friendship between the man and
the woman whom she had brought together. But if the dear old lady felt
any twinges of an apprehensive conscience, when she saw the pair day
after day coming down the mountain-side through the long shadows of
the late afternoon, she very promptly banished them, and, quite
consistently, with what Brian called her "River philosophy," made no
attempt to separate these two life currents, which, for the time at
least, seemed to be merging into one.

And often, as the three sat together on the porch after supper to watch
the sunsets, or later in the evening as Auntie Sue sat with her sewing
while they were busy with their work and unobserving, the dear old lady
would look at them with a little smile of tender meaning, and into the
gentle eyes would come that far-away look that was born of the memories
that had so sweetened the long