ot seem to offend her. She thanked
him generously. "No; these coats are hard to walk in, and I want to
walk," she exclaimed.

"I like to hear the leaves rustle when you kick them, don't you? When
I was so high, I used to pretend it was wading in the surf."

The young man moved over to the gutter of the road where the leaves
were deepest and kicked violently. "And the more noise you make," he
said, "the more you frighten away the wild animals."

The girl shuddered in a most helpless and fascinating fashion.

"Don't!" she whispered. "I didn't mention it, but already I have seen
several lions crouching behind the trees."

"Indeed?" said the young man. His tone was preoccupied. He had just
kicked a rock, hidden by the leaves, and was standing on one leg.

"Do you mean you don't believe me?" asked the girl, "or is it that you
are merely brave?"

"Merely brave!" exclaimed the young man. "Massachusetts is so far north
for lions," he continued, "that I fancy what you saw was a grizzly
bear. But I have my trusty electric torch with me, and if there is
anything a bear cannot abide, it is to be pointed at by an electric
torch."

"Let us pretend," cried the girl, "that we are the babes in the wood,
and that we are lost."

"We don't have to pretend we're lost," said the man, "and as I remember
it, the babes came to a sad end. Didn't they die, and didn't the birds
bury them with leaves?"

"Sam and Mr. Peabody can be the birds," suggested the girl.

"Sam and Peabody hopping around with leaves in their teeth would look
silly," objected the man, "I doubt if I could keep from laughing."

"Then," said the girl, "they can be the wicked robbers who came to kill
the babes."

"Very well," said the man with suspicious alacrity, "let us be babes.
If I have to die," he went on heartily, "I would rather die with you
than live with any one else."

When he had spoken, although they were entirely alone in the world and
quite near to each other, it was as though the girl could not hear him,
even as though he had not spoken at all. After a silence, the girl
said: "Perhaps it would be better for us to go back to the car."

"I won't do it again," begged the man.

"We will pretend," cried the girl, "that the car is a van and that we
are gypsies, and we'll build a campfire, and I will tell your fortune."

"You are the only woman who can," muttered the young man.

The girl still stood in her tracks.

"You said--" she bega