hose two words lies the real
vacation essence.

Meanwhile, as I munched and sipped, with luxurious irresponsibility, I
watched Maria moving to and fro between the shrubs that bounded the east
alley of the old garden. In her compressed city surroundings she had
always seemed to me a very big sort of person, with an efficiency that
was at times overpowering, whose brown eyes had a "charge bayonet" way
of fixing one, as if commanding the attention of her pupils by force of
eye had become a habit. But here, her most cherished belongings given
room to breathe in the spare room that rambles across one end of the
house, while her wardrobe has a chance to realize itself in the deep
closet, Maria in two short days had become another person.

She does not seem large, but merely well built. The black gowns and
straight white collars that she always wore, as a sort of professional
garb, have vanished before a shirtwaist with an openwork neck and half
sleeves, while the flesh exposed thereby is pink and wholesome. Hair not
secured for the wear and tear of the daily rounds of school, but allowed
to air itself, requires only a few hair-pins, and, if it is naturally
wavy, follows its own will with good effect. While as to her eyes, what
in them seemed piercing at short range melted to an engaging frankness
in the soft light under the trees. In short, if she had been any other
than Maria Maxwell, music teacher, Bart's staid cousin and the avowed
family spinster, I should have thought of her as a fine-looking woman
who only needed a magic touch of some sort to become positively
handsome. Coffee and paper finished, I became aware that Bart was gazing
at me.

"Well," I said, extending my hand, "what next?" I had speedily made up
my mind that Bart should take the initiative in our camping-out
arrangement, and I therefore did not suggest that the first thing to be
done was to set our camp itself in order.

"Come out," he said, taking my hand in the same way that the Infant does
when she wishes to lead the way to the discovery of the fairyland that
lies beyond the meadows of the farm. So we sauntered out. Once under
the sun, the same delicious thought occurred to each that, certain
prudences having been seen to, we were for the time without
responsibilities, and the fact made us laugh for the very freedom of it
and pull one another hither and thither like a couple of children.

Meanwhile the word _knoll_ had not been uttered, but our fee