mplexioned woman. She wears spe'tacles.
She's"--he paused there an instant and caught his breath--"she's pretty
fleshy."

"Was she nice to you?"

"Yes, she was nice. She meant to be real nice and kind. She made me"--a
spasm twitched his face, and he concluded--"she made me play croquet."

They stood there in the wood loneliness, dapples of sunlight flickering
on them through the leaves. Marietta felt a strange wave of something
rushing over her. It might have been mirth, or indignation that somebody
had destroyed her old friend's paradise; but it threatened to sweep her
from her basis of control.

"You sit down, Jerry," she said soberly. "I'm going to the spring to get
you a cup of water, and then we'll have our luncheon."

When she returned, bearing the full cup delicately, he lay like a
disconsolate boy, face down upon the ground; so she touched him on the
shoulder and said, in a tone of the brisk housewife:--

"Luncheon's ready."

Then Jerry sat up, and ate when she put food into his hand and drank
from the cup she gave him. Marietta ate only a crumb here and there from
her one bit of bread, for, seeing how hungry he was, she suspected that,
in his poet's rapture, he had had no breakfast. She tried to rouse him
to the things he loved.

"Only look through there," she said, pointing to a vista where a group
of birches were shimmering in green. "I don't know 's I ever see a
fountain such as they tell about, but this time in the year, before the
leaves have fairly come, seems if the green was like a fountain
springing up and never falling back. Maybe, though, it's the word I
like, the sound of it. I don't know."

Jerry turned his eyes on her in a quick, keen glance.

"Marietta," he said, "you have real pretty thoughts."

"Do I?" asked Marietta, laughing, without consciousness. She was only
glad to have beguiled him from the trouble of his mind. "Well, if I do,
I guess you put 'em into my head in the first place." The feast was
over, and she folded the napkin and swept away the crumbs. "Want some
more water?" she asked, pausing as she repacked the basket.

Jerry shook his head.

"Marietta," said he, "seems if it wa'n't a day since you and I used to
be here picnicking."

She laughed again whimsically.

"Well," she said, "when I travel back over the seams I've sewed, looks
like a good long day. I guess there's miles enough of 'em to stretch
from here to State o' Maine."

Jerry seemed to be speaking from