yellow banners
or speeches from the tops of busses? She is too busy trying to please
him."

"It would be a great experiment. I'd like to try it."

Brinsley, uncorking a hot and cold bottle, boldly surmised, "It is the
little school-teacher?"

Geoffrey, again flat on the grass, murmured, "Yes."

"And it is neck and neck between you and that young cousin of mine?"

"I am afraid he is a neck ahead."

"It all depends upon which runs away with her first."

Again Geoffrey murmured, "I'd like to try it."

"Why not?" said Brinsley and beamed over his coffee cup like a benevolent
spider at an unsuspecting fly. He had no idea that his fooling might be
taken seriously. It was not given to his cynicism to comprehend the mood
of the seemingly composed young person who lay on the grass with his hat
over his eyes--torn by contending emotions, maddened by despair and the
dread of darkness, awakened to new impulses in which youth and hot blood
fought against an almost reverent tenderness for the object of his
adoration. Since the night of the Crossroads ball Geoffrey had permitted
himself to hope. She had turned to him then. For the first time he had
felt that the barriers were down between them.

"Now Richard," Brinsley was saying, as he smoked luxuriously after the
feast, "ought to marry Eve. She'll get her Aunt Maude's money, and be the
making of him."

* * * * *

Richard, who at that very moment was riding through the country on his
old white horse, had no thought of Eve.

The rhythm of old Ben's even trot formed an accompaniment to the song
that his heart was singing--

"I think she was the most beautiful lady,
That ever was in the West Country----"

As he passed along the road, he was aware of the world's awakening. His
ears caught the faint flat bleating of lambs, the call of the cocks, the
high note of the hens, the squeal of little pigs, and above all, the
clamor of blackbirds and of marauding crows.

The trees, too, were beginning to show the pale tints of spring, and an
amethyst haze enveloped the hills. The river was silver in the shadow and
gold in the sun; the little streams that ran down to it seemed to sing as
they went.

Coming at last to an old white farmhouse, Richard dismounted and went in.
The old man bent with rheumatism welcomed him, and the old wife said,
"He is always better when he knows that you are coming, doctor."

The old man nodded. "Your gran'