upidly at the water. She noticed that
everything was as she had left it in the spring, with many fresher
improvements, made, no doubt, to please her. She closed her eyes,
leaned against a big tree, and slow, cold and hot shudders alternated
in shaking her frame.

She did not open her eyes when she heard a step and her name called.
She knew without taking the trouble to look that George had come home,
found her luggage in her room, and was hunting for her. She heard him
come closer and knew when he seated himself that he was watching her,
but she did not care enough even to move. Finally she shifted her
position to rest herself, opened her eyes, and looked at him without a
word. He returned her gaze steadily, smiling gravely. She had never
seen him looking so well. He had put in the summer grooming himself,
he had kept up the house and garden, and spent all his spare time on
the ravine, and farming on the shares with his mother's sister who
lived three miles east of them. At last she roused herself and again
looked at him.

"I had your letter this morning," she said.

"I was wondering about that," he replied.

"Yes, I got it just before I started," said Kate. "Are you surprised
to see me?"

"No," he answered. "After last year, we figured you might come the
last of this week or the first of next, so we got your room ready
Monday."

"Thank you," said Kate. "It's very clean and nice."

"I hope soon to be able to offer you such a room and home as you should
have," he said. "I haven't opened my office yet. It was late and hot
when I got home in June and Mother was fussing about this winter--that
she had no garden and didn't do her share at Aunt Ollie's, so I have
farmed most of the summer, and lived on hope; but I'll start in and
make things fly this fall, and by spring I'll be sailing around with a
horse and carriage like the best of them. You bet I am going to make
things hum, so I can offer you anything you want."

"You haven't opened an office yet?" she asked for the sake of saying
something, and because a practical thing would naturally suggest itself
to her.

"I haven't had a breath of time," he said in candid disclaimer.

"Why don't you ask me what's the matter?"

"Didn't figure that it was any of my business in the first place," he
said, "and I have a pretty fair idea, in the second."

"But how could you have?" she asked in surprise.

"When your sister wouldn't give me your address, she