ally. "That's how I like life!"

They went along hillsides and looked down into the beautiful valleys;
they wound around by the sides of rivers and through deep woods; they
went like the wind; they loafed; they explored country lanes and lost
their way, stopped at a farm-house and found it again, shouted with
delight when a squirrel tried to race them along the top of a fence,
gasped together when they nearly ran over a turkey, chatted, laughed,
sang (though this was a solo, for Mary couldn't sing, though she tried
now and then under her breath), and with every mile they rode they seemed
to pass invisible milestones along the road which leads from friendship
to love.

It came to a crisis two weeks later, on an afternoon in June.

Mary was in the garden picking a bouquet for the table, and Wally went to
help her. She gave him a smile that made his heart do a trick, and when
he bent over to help her break a piece of mignonette, his hand touched
hers....

"Mary...." he whispered.

"Yes?"

"Do you love me a little bit now?"

"I wonder...." said she, and they both bent over to pick another piece of
mignonette. Away down deep in Mary, a voice whispered, "Somebody's
watching." She looked toward the house and caught sight of Helen who was
sitting sideways on the veranda rail and missing never a move.

Wally followed Mary's glance.

"She'll be down here in a minute," he frowned to himself. At the bottom
of the lawn, overlooking the valley, was a summer house of rustic cedar,
nearly covered with honeysuckle.

"Let's take a stroll down there, shall we?" he asked.

The tremor of his voice told Mary more than his words.

"He wants to love me," she thought, and burying her face in her bouquet
she said in a muffled little voice, "...I don't care."

They went down to the summer house, talking, trying to appear
indifferent, but both of them knowing that a truly tremendous moment in
their drama of life was close at hand.

They seated themselves opposite each other on the bench and Mary's dreamy
eyes went out over the valley.

"Mary...." he began. She looked at him for a moment and then her glance
went out over the valley again.

"Don't you think we've waited long enough?" he gently asked.

But Mary's eyes were still upon the valley below.

"In a way, I'm glad you've waited," he said. "Judge Cutler told me some
of the wonderful things you did here during the war. But you don't want
to be bothering with a factory as