away."

"'Suppose' some more," she begged dreamily. "I love it. It rests me."

She clasped her hands back of her head and closed her eyes.

The young man looked quietly about him.

"This is a wild and beautiful country," said he, "but it lacks
something. I think it is the soul. The little wood lots of the East
have so much of it." He paused in surprise at his own thoughts. His
only experiences in the woods East had been when out picnicking, or
berrying, and he had never noticed these things. "I don't know as I
ever thought of it there," he went on slowly, as though trying to be
honest with her, "but here it comes to me somehow or another." A little
fly-catcher shot up from the frond below, poised a moment, and dropped
back with closed wings.

"Do you know the birds?" she asked.

"I'm afraid not," he admitted; "I don't really _know_ much about
Nature, but I love it, and I'm going to learn more. I know only the
very common birds, and one other. Did you ever hear the hermit thrush
sing?"

"Never."

"Oh!" he cried in sudden enthusiasm, "then there is another 'suppose'
for us, the best of all."

"I love the dear old house!" she objected doubtfully.

"But the hermit thrush is better. The old country minister took me to
hear him one Sunday afternoon and I shall never forget it."

She glanced at his animated face through half-closed eyes.

"Tell me," she urged softly.

"'Suppose' we were back East," he began, "and in the country, just
about this time of year. We would wait until the afternoon--why! just
about this time, when the sun is getting low. We would push through the
bushes at the edge of the woods where the little tinkling birds sing in
the fence corners, and would enter the deep high woods where the trees
are tall and still. The moss is thick and soft in there, and there are
little pools lying calm and dark, and there is a kind of a _hush_ in
the air--not silence, you know, but like when a big crowd of people are
keeping still. And then we would walk very carefully, and speak low,
and we would sit by the side of a fallen log and wait. After a while
the thrush would sing, a deep note, with a thrill in it, like a bell
slow and solemn. When you hear it you too feel a thrill as though you
had heard a great and noble thought. Why, it is almost _holy_!"

He turned to the girl. She was looking at him.

"Why, hullo!" he exclaimed, "what's the matter?"

Her eyes were brimming with tears.

"Nothing," she sa