."

In return she chose to smile radiantly. Turning toward him, she said,
"If you will be good now--always--perhaps I'll forgive you."

They drove home in the sombre shadows of the hills, with Stanley padding
along under the wagon. The Worcester girls tried to induce Hollanden to
sing, and in consequence there was quarrelling until the blinking lights
of the inn appeared above them as if a great lantern hung there.

Hollanden conveyed his friend some distance on the way home from the inn
to the farm. "Good time at the picnic?" said the writer.

"Yes."

"Picnics are mainly places where the jam gets on the dead leaves, and
from thence to your trousers. But this was a good little picnic." He
glanced at Hawker. "But you don't look as if you had such a swell time."

Hawker waved his hand tragically. "Yes--no--I don't know."

"What's wrong with you?" asked Hollanden.

"I tell you what it is, Hollie," said the painter darkly, "whenever I'm
with that girl I'm such a blockhead. I'm not so stupid, Hollie. You know
I'm not. But when I'm with her I can't be clever to save my life."

Hollanden pulled contentedly at his pipe. "Maybe she don't notice it."

"Notice it!" muttered Hawker, scornfully; "of course she notices it. In
conversation with her, I tell you, I am as interesting as an iron dog."
His voice changed as he cried, "I don't know why it is. I don't know why
it is."

Blowing a huge cloud of smoke into the air, Hollanden studied it
thoughtfully. "Hits some fellows that way," he said. "And, of course, it
must be deuced annoying. Strange thing, but now, under those
circumstances, I'm very glib. Very glib, I assure you."

"I don't care what you are," answered Hawker. "All those confounded
affairs of yours--they were not----"

"No," said Hollanden, stolidly puffing, "of course not. I understand
that. But, look here, Billie," he added, with sudden brightness, "maybe
you are not a blockhead, after all. You are on the inside, you know, and
you can't see from there. Besides, you can't tell what a woman will
think. You can't tell what a woman will think."

"No," said Hawker, grimly, "and you suppose that is my only chance?"

"Oh, don't be such a chump!" said Hollanden, in a tone of vast
exasperation.

They strode for some time in silence. The mystic pines swaying over the
narrow road made talk sibilantly to the wind. Stanley, the setter, took
it upon himself to discover some menacing presence in the woods. He
walke