hould know
you. You ain't changed at all."

That was not true. He looked ten years older than his real age; yet time
had only dowered him with a finer grace and charm. All the lines in his
face were those of gentleness and truth. His mouth had the old delicate
curves. One meeting him that day might have said, with a throb of
involuntary homage, "How beautiful he must have been when he was young!"
But to Dilly he bore even a more subtile distinction than in that
far-away time; he had ripened into something harmonizing with her own
years. He came forward a little, and held out both hands; but Dilly did
not take them, and he dropped the left one. Then she laid her fingers
lightly in his, and they greeted each other like old acquaintances. A
flush rose in her smooth brown cheek. Her eyes grew bright with that
startled questioning which is of the woods. He looked at her the more
intently, and his breath quickened. She had none of the blossomy charm
of more robust womanhood; but he recognized the old gypsy element which
had once bewitched him, and felt he loved her still.

"Well," he said, and his voice shook a little, "are you glad to see me?"

Dilly moved back, and sat down in her mother's little sewing-chair by
the desk. "I don't know as I can tell," she answered. "This is a strange
day."

Jethro nodded. "I meant to surprise you," he said. "So I never wrote I
was coming on so soon. I was real disappointed to find your house shut
up; but the neighbors told me where you'd gone, and what you'd gone for.
Then I walked over here."

Dilly's face brightened all over with a responsive smile. "Did you come
through the woods?" she asked. "What made you?"

"Why, I knew you'd go that way," he answered. "I thought you'd get
wool-gathering over some weed or another, and maybe I'd overtake you."

They both laughed, and the ice was broken. Dilly got briskly up and
gathered a drawer-full of papers into her apron.

"I can't stop workin'," she said. "I want to fix it so's not to stay
here more'n one night. Now you talk! I know what these are. I can run
'em over an' listen too."

"I think't was real good of you to turn in the place to Tom's folks,"
said Jethro, also seating himself, and, as Dilly saw with a start, as if
it were an omen, in her father's great chair. "Not that you'll ever need
it, Dilly. You won't want for a thing. I've done real well."

Dilly's long fingers assorted papers and laid them at either side, with
a neat