ed Marietta flippantly. "Here, you wait a minute
till I get me out my basket. When you come back you be sure to coot."

Jerry drove on a step or two, and then drew in the horse. Just as she
had set her basket over the bars and was prepared to follow, he called
to her:--

"Marietta, I believe I'll leave the team."

Marietta understood. She came back readily.

"Well," she said, "I think 'twould look better, myself."

"I can hitch to the bars, same as we used to," Jerry continued.
"Remember how Underhill's old Buckskin used to crib the fence? Here's
the very piece of zinc Blaisdell nailed on that summer we were here so
much."

He had turned and driven back, and while he tied the horse, Marietta
took out the box of lilies.

"I guess you better hold these loose in your hand," she said
tentatively. "Seems to me 'twould look more appropriate."

Jerry nodded. They both had a vision of the poet going on foot to the
lady of his dreams, his lilies in his hand. Marietta lifted the cover of
the box and unrolled them deftly. She looked about her for an instant,
and then, finding feasible standing-ground, went to one of the runnels
dripping down the cliff and paused there, holding the lily stems in the
cool laving of the fall. Jerry, the horse tied, stood watching her and
waiting. The bright blue of her dress shone softly against the wet brown
and black of the cliff wall, and the pink of her cheeks glowed above it
like a rosy light. Marietta had thought her dress far too gay when she
bought it, but the dusk of the ravine road had toned it down to a tint
the picture needed for full harmony. Jerry, though the familiar spot and
her presence in it soothed and pleased him, was running ahead with his
eager mind to the farm where Ruth Bellair stood waiting at the gate. Of
course she was not really waiting for him, because she did not know he
was coming, nor even that he lived at all. When he had mailed her the
package of autumn leaves Marietta had pressed, he had not sent his name
with them. Yet it seemed to him appropriate that she should be standing,
a girlish figure, by the Moodys' gate, to let him in. After that they
would walk up the path together, she carrying the lilies; and perhaps in
the orchard, where the trees were in bloom, they would pace back and
forth together and talk and talk. Jerry knew it was too early for
apple-trees to be blossoming, even in this weather, but the orchard
where Ruth Bellair walked would be white