t hill with the pines on
it. There's going to be a beautiful little fight when those two birds
meet, and that college girl's going to see it. I wish I--There's the
other one again; they get closer each time! Didn't you hear it?"

The wife replied, mainly to herself, that she did not; that if he had
her backache he wouldn't hear a brass band, and that her next walk would
be by herself.

The partner did not venture to look back after that, but as they
sauntered on, rarely speaking except when the mother rebuked the
children, he listened eagerly, and after a silence of unaccountable
length, finally heard the two calls once more, up near the rapids and
very close to each other. He dared not prick his ears, but while he
agreed with his wife that if they were ever going home at all it was
time they were about it, he could not but think the outcome of a man's
life depends largely on the sort of girl he gets.

At the upper end of the meadow, meantime, Barbara Garnet, with "Herrick"
in one hand and her hat pressed against the back of her skirts in the
other, was bending and peering round the trunk of an elm draped to the
ground in flounces of its own green. The last response to her whistle
had seemed to come from a spot so close in front of her that she feared
to risk another step, and yet, peep and pry as she might, she could
neither spy out nor nearer decoy the cunning challenger. In a sense of
delinquency she noted the sky showing yellow and red through the
hill-top pines, and seeing she must make short end of her play, prepared
to rush out upon the rogue and have an old-time laugh at his pretty
panic. So!--one for the money, two for the show, three to make ready,
and four for to--"Ha, ha, ha!"--

"Good gracious alive!" exclaimed the quail, leaping from his back to his
feet, and standing a fathom tall before the gasping, half-sinking girl.
"Good gra'--why--why, my good gracious, Miss Barb! why--why, my good
gracious!" insisted John March.

LXXIII.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER CHAPEL

There was a great deal of pleasure in the house of the three sisters
that evening. The widow asked March to stay to tea, and when he opened
his mouth to decline, the wrong word fell out and he accepted. He
confided to Barbara his fear that in so doing he had blundered, but she
softly scouted the idea, and with a delicious reproachfulness in her
murmur, "wondered if he supposed they"--etc.

At table he sat next to her, in the seat the sist