been
trained in the open, and little escaped it. One day, as a test, they
strove to see which could discover the greater number of birds' nests.
And he, who had always prided himself on his own acutely trained
observation, found himself hard put to keep his score ahead. At the
end of the day he was but three nests in the lead, one of which she
challenged stoutly and of which even he confessed serious doubt. He
complimented her and told her that her success must be due to the fact
that she was a bird herself, with all a bird's keen vision and
quick-flashing ways.

The more he knew her the more he became convinced of this birdlike
quality in her. That was why she liked to ride, he argued. It was the
nearest approach to flying. A field of poppies, a glen of ferns, a row
of poplars on a country lane, the tawny brown of a hillside, the shaft
of sunlight on a distant peak--all such were provocative of quick joys
which seemed to him like so many outbursts of song. Her joys were in
little things, and she seemed always singing. Even in sterner things
it was the same. When she rode Bob and fought with that magnificent
brute for mastery, the qualities of an eagle were uppermost in her.

These quick little joys of hers were sources of joy to him. He joyed
in her joy, his eyes as excitedly fixed on her as bears were fixed on
the object of her attention. Also through her he came to a closer
discernment and keener appreciation of nature. She showed him colors in
the landscape that he would never have dreamed were there. He had
known only the primary colors. All colors of red were red. Black was
black, and brown was just plain brown until it became yellow, when it
was no longer brown. Purple he had always imagined was red, something
like blood, until she taught him better. Once they rode out on a high
hill brow where wind-blown poppies blazed about their horses' knees,
and she was in an ecstasy over the lines of the many distances. Seven,
she counted, and he, who had gazed on landscapes all his life, for the
first time learned what a "distance" was. After that, and always, he
looked upon the face of nature with a more seeing eye, learning a
delight of his own in surveying the serried ranks of the upstanding
ranges, and in slow contemplation of the purple summer mists that
haunted the languid creases of the distant hills.

But through it all ran the golden thread of love. At first he had been
content just to ride with