ch as I could, so I
climbed to the seat in the top of the pine and ate them there. I can
remember distinctly how lovely it was. They tasted better than any
candies I've ever had before or since, and I leaned back on the boughs,
rocking and eating and looking at the clouds and feeling the wind
swaying the trunk. I can shut my eyes and feel again the sense of
being entirely happy, sort of limp and forgetful and _so_ contented. I
don't know whether it was only the candies, or a combination of things
that were just right that day and never combined the same way again.
For I tried it often afterwards, with cake and fruit tart and other
candies, but it was no good. But I couldn't have the tree cut down,
for there was always a hope that I might get the combination right and
have that perfectly delightful time once more."

The doctor's laughter echoed between the banks, and hers fell in with
it, though she had told her story with the utmost sedateness.

"Was there ever such a materialist?" he chuckled. "It all rose from a
box of New York candy, and I thought it was sentiment. Twenty-one
years old and the same baby, only not quite so fat."

"Well, it was the truth," she said defensively. "I suppose if I'd left
the candy out it would have sounded better."

"Don't leave the candy out. It was the candy and the truth that made
it all Susan's."

She picked up a stone and threw it in the river, then as she watched
its splash: "Doesn't it seem long ago when we were in Rochester?"

"We left there in April and this is June."

"Yes, a short time in weeks, but some way or other it seems like ages.
When I think of it I feel as if it was at the other side of the world,
and I'd grown years and years older since we left. If I go on this way
I'll be fully fifty-three when we get to California."

"What's made you feel so old?"

"I don't exactly know. I don't think it's because we've gone over so
much space, but that has something to do with it. It seems as if the
change was more in me."

"How have you changed?"

She gathered up the loose stones near her and dropped them from palm to
palm, frowning a little in an effort to find words to clothe her vague
thought.

"I don't know that either, or I can't express it. I liked things there
that I don't care for any more. They were such babyish things and
amounted to nothing, but they seemed important then. Now nothing seems
important but things that are--the things that wou