, but you are sweaty."

She bent to him and with her handkerchief dabbed his lip and forehead
dry, then dried his palms.

"I breathe through my skin, I guess," he explained. "The wise guys in
the trainin' camps and gyms say it's a good sign for health. But somehow
I'm sweatin' more than usual now. Funny, ain't it?"

She had been forced to unclasp his hand from her arm in order to dry it,
and when she finished, it returned to its old position.

"But, say, ain't your skin cool," he repeated with renewed wonder. "Soft
as velvet, too, an' smooth as silk. It feels great."

Gently explorative, he slid his hand from wrist to elbow and came to
rest half way back. Tired and languid from the morning in the sun, she
found herself thrilling to his touch and half-dreamily deciding that
here was a man she could love, hands and all.

"Now I've taken the cool all out of that spot." He did not look up to
her, and she could see the roguish smile that curled on his lips. "So I
guess I'll try another."

He shifted his hand along her arm with soft sensuousness, and she,
looking down at his lips, remembered the long tingling they had given
hers the first time they had met.

"Go on and talk," he urged, after a delicious five minutes of silence.
"I like to watch your lips talking. It's funny, but every move they make
looks like a tickly kiss."

Greatly she wanted to stay where she was. Instead, she said:

"If I talk, you won't like what I say."

"Go on," he insisted. "You can't say anything I won't like."

"Well, there's some poppies over there by the fence I want to pick. And
then it's time for us to be going."

"I lose," he laughed. "But you made twenty-five tickle kisses just the
same. I counted 'em. I'll tell you what: you sing 'When the Harvest Days
Are Over,' and let me have your other cool arm while you're doin' it,
and then we'll go."

She sang looking down into his eyes, which ware centered, not on hers,
but on her lips. When she finished, she slipped his hands from her arms
and got up. He was about to start for the horses, when she held her
jacket out to him. Despite the independence natural to a girl who
earned her own living, she had an innate love of the little services and
finenesses; and, also, she remembered from her childhood the talk by the
pioneer women of the courtesy and attendance of the caballeros of the
Spanish-California days.

Sunset greeted them when, after a wide circle to the east and south,
they