good many around
that little old ruin further up the road, you know."

"Yes, I know," he said. (He felt himself suddenly in a tumult of
uncertainty. "It would be no harm just to say a word," he thought. "Why
shouldn't she know--no matter if she can never care herself--that I care?
It would not trouble her. No, I am a fool to think of it,--I won't.")
"But it is so early for you to be out alone," he said. "Do you take care
of her, Max?"

"Max is a most constant friend," Lois replied; "he never leaves me." Then
she blushed, lest Gifford should think that she had thought he was not
constant.

But Gifford's thoughts were never so complicated. With him, it was
either, "She loves me," or, "She does not;" he never tormented himself,
after the fashion of women, by wondering what this look meant, or that
inflection, and fearing that the innermost recesses of his mind might be
guessed from a calm and indifferent face.

"You see the old chimney?" Lois said, as they drew near the small ruin.
"Some mushrooms grow right in on the hearth."

It was rather the suggestion of a ruin, for the walls were not standing;
only this stone chimney with the wide, blackened fireplace, and the flat
doorstones before what was once the threshold. Grass and brambles
covered the foundations; lilacs, with spikes of brown dead blossoms, grew
tall and thick around it, and roses, gone back to wild singleness,
blossomed near the steps and along a path, which was only a memory, the
grass had tangled so above it.

Max kept his nose under Lois's hand, and the horse stumbled once over
a stone that had rolled from the broken foundation and hidden itself
beneath a dock. The mushrooms had opened their little shining brown
umbrellas, as Lois had said, on the very hearth, and she stooped down to
gather them and put them in her basket of sweet grass. From the bushes at
one side came the sudden note of a bob-white; Max pricked his ears.

"Lois," Gifford said abruptly, still telling himself that he was a
fool,--but then, it was all so commonplace, so free from sentiment, so
public, with Max, and the horse, and the bob-white, it could not trouble
her just to--"Lois, I'd like--I'd like to tell you something, if you
don't mind."

"What?" she said pleasantly; her basket was full, and they began to walk
back to the road again.

Gifford stopped to let his horse crop the thick wet grass about a fallen
gate-post. He threw his arm over the bay's neck, and Lois leaned