Do you suppose we can manage
to get over there without running down a bake-shop?"

"Or a cider-mill," said Sylvie, laughing. "You will have to adapt
your exploits to circumstances."

Up and down, through that beautiful, wild hill-country, the brown
country roadway wound; now going straight up a pitch that looked as
perpendicular as you approached it as the side of a barn; then
flinging itself down such a steep as seemed at every turn to come to
a blank end, and to lead off with a plunge, into air; the
water-bars, ridged across at rough intervals, girding it to the
bosom of the mountain, and breaking the accelerated velocity of the
descending wheels. Sylvie caught her breath, more than once; but she
did it behind shut lips, with only a dilatation of her nostrils. She
was so afraid that Rodney might think she doubted his driving.

The woods were growing tender with fretwork of swelling buds, and
beautiful with bright, young hemlock-tips; there was a twittering
and calling of birds all through the air; the first little breaths
and ripples of spring music before the whole gay, summer burst of
song gushed forth.

The fields lay rich in brown seams, where the plough had newly
furrowed them. Farmers were throwing in seed of barley and spring
wheat. The cattle were standing in the low sunshine, in barn-doors
and milking-yards. Sheep were browsing the little buds on the
pasture bushes.

The April day would soon be over. To-morrow might bring a cold wind,
perhaps; but the winter had been long and hard; and after such, we
believe in the spring pleasantness when it comes.

"What a little way brings us into a different world!" said Sylvie as
they rode along. "Just back there in the city, you can hardly
believe in these hills."

Her own words reminded her.

"I suppose we shall find, sometime," she said gently, "that the
other world is only a little way out."

"I've been very sorry for you, Sylvie," said Rodney. "I hope you
know that."

His slight abruptness told her how the thought had been ready and
pressing for speech, underneath all their casual talk.

And he had dropped the prefix from her name.

He had not meant to, but he could not go back and put it on. It was
another little falling out that he could not help. The things he
could not help were the most comfortable.

"Mother would have had a very hard time if she had lived," said
Sylvie. "I am glad for her. It was a great deal better. And it came
so tenderly!