"You don't mind my looking at what you read?" he asked.
"If you like. It is some verses--_not_ what _you_ would care for, in the least, but they have given me great pleasure."
A glance showed him that his suspicion was correct. The stanzas in question had been written by him some months before, and sent, unsigned, to the editor.
"Will you tell me what you fancy in these?" he said, with fine indifference of manner.
"Why does one like a flower, or worship a star? They suit me, I suppose, and I am learning them by heart."
His own heart throbbed with a schoolboy's glee and pride. But he said nothing, and walked beside her light figure, in the round of garden and orchard, bringing up in the stable-yard. Here, a space paved with grass-grown cobblestones was bounded on three sides by frame structures, now, in their decay, as gray and as fragile-looking as hornets' nests.
"And the little house built of limestone, with one window, was put up in Colonial days, for refuge in case of an Indian raid. Mr. Lloyd will tell you one of his best stories, about an adventure of his ancestor in there, when three white men successfully resisted a band of red-skins. Perhaps our aboriginal anecdotes would bore you, however. If so, give us only a little hint, and we desist. Now, shan't we go in and see your horses?"
She lifted the latch; Vance followed her, past stalls where the occupants gave her immediate recognition, to those in which his own pair were comfortably ensconced. Merrylad, ungallant fellow, would have none of the young lady, but at the touch and voice of his master, turned his beautiful head sidewise to lay it upon Vance's shoulder with affection.
"I am, at last, an illustration of the legend, 'Some one to love me,'" he said, laughing. "So you thought I had forsaken you, old man? Not I, my beauty. Gently, gently, you are too demonstrative."
"I can't imagine life without horses and dogs; can you?" she said, with the quickly growing comradeship of a child. "There; I was determined that Merrylad should let me stroke his neck!"
From the stables, whose inmates seemed to have put them upon a better footing, they passed again under the pink-blossomed arcades of an apple-orchard, to pause beside a curious indentation, like a dimple, in the turf.