The young people were arranging, as Lemuel slunk past them in the dark, a fishing party for the following day. The proposal had been Isabel’s—she had a fertile mind for pleasure planning—and Annie and Seth were delighted with it. They would take a basket of food, and make the tea over a fire in the woods, and the two women could take turns in playing at fishing with a little rod which Seth had made for himself as a boy. It would be an ideal way of bidding good-bye to Seth, said his pretty sister-in-law, and Annie, feeling more deeply both the significance of saying good-bye and the charm of having a whole day to herself along the river and in his company, had assented eagerly.

As for Seth, this sudden accession of feminine interest in, and concern for, him was extremely pleasant and grateful. The very suggestion of the trip, in his honor, was like a sweet taken in advance from the honeyed future which he was so soon to realize. Long that night, after he had walked over to the Warren gate with Annie, and returned to the unlathed attic where Milton lay already snoring, he thought fondly of the morrow’s treat.

The morning came, warm but overcast, with a soft tendency of air from the west. “It couldn’t have been better if it had been made to order,” Seth said enthusiastically, when Isabel made her appearance before breakfast. “It will be good fishing and good walking, not too hot and not wet.”

Albert smiled a trifle satirically when the project was unfolded to him—with that conceited tolerance which people who don’t fish always extend to those who do. “You’ll probably get wet and have the toothache” he said to his wife, but offered no objection.

The lunch was packed, the poles were ready, the bait-can stood outside the shed door, breakfast was a thing of the past, and Isabel sat with her sunhat and parasol—but Annie did not come. Seth fidgeted and fumed as a half-hour went by, then the hour itself. It was so unlike Annie to be late. He made an errand to the hay-barn, to render the waiting less tedious, and it was there that Milton found him, rummaging among some old harness for a strap.

“Annie’s come over,” said Milton, “I heerd her say somethin’ ’baout not goin’ fishin’, after all. Looks ’sif she’d be’n cryin’ tew. I tole ’em I’d fetch yeh.”

Seth came out into the light, slapping the dust off his hands. “What’s that you say? Why isn’t she going?”

“I dunnao nothin’ more ’n I’ve told yeh. Ask her yerself. I ’spose she’s be’n cryin’ at the thought of yer goin’. That’ll be the eend o’ ev’rythin’ atwixt you two, won’t it?”

“Oh, do mind your own business, Milton!” Seth said, and hurried across the barnyard to where the two young women stood, on the doorstep. “Why aren’t you going, Annie? What’s the matter?” he called out as he approached.

Poor Annie looked the picture of despair. Her face bore the marks of recent tears and she hung her head in silence. Isabel answered for her.

“Going? Of course she is going. It would be ridiculous not to go, now that everything’s arranged. Get the things together, Seth, and let us make a start.”

“But Milton said she wasn’t going,” persisted Seth.

“Dear, dear, how downright you are! Don’t I tell you that she is going, that there is nothing the matter, that we are waiting for you?” And there was nothing more to be said.

The sun came out before the trio had gone far, but not before they had begun to forget the cloud at the start. The grass in the pastures was not quite dry yet, but wet feet were a part of the fun of the thing, Isabel said gaily. The meadow larks careened in the air about them, and the bobolinks, swinging on the thistle tops, burst into chorus from every side as the sunlight spread over the hill-side. There were robins, too, in the juniper trees beyond the white-flowering buckwheat patch, Seth pointed out, too greedy to wait till the green berries ripened. A flock of crows rose from the buckwheat as they passed and who could help smiling at Isabel’s citified imitation of their strident hawing? They came upon some strawberries, half-hidden in the tall grass beside the rail-topped wall, and Isabel would gather them in her handkerchief, to serve as dessert in their coming al fresco dinner, and Annie helped her, smiling in spite of herself at the city lady’s extravagant raptures.

When they stopped to rest, in the fresh-scented shadow of the woods, and sat on a log along the path, two wee chipmunks came out from the brake opposite and began a chirping altercation, so comical in its suggestions of human wrangling that they all laughed outright. The sound scared away the tiny rodents in a twinkling, and it banished as swiftly the restraint under which the excursion had begun.

From that moment it was all gayety, jesting, enjoyment. Isabel was the life of the party; she said the drollest things;—passed the quaintest comments,—revealed such an inexhaustable store of spirits that she lifted her companions fairly out of their serious selves. Seth found himself talking easily, freely, and even Annie now and again made little jokes, at which they all laughed merrily.

The fisherman’s judgment as to the day was honored in full measure. The fish had never bitten more sharply, the eddies had never carried the line better. It seemed so easy, to let the line wander back and forth between the two currents, to tell when the bait was grabbed underneath, and to haul out the plunging, flapping beauty, that Isabel was all eagerness to try it, and Seth rigged the little pole for her, baited the hook self-sacrificingly with his biggest worm, which he had thought of in connection with a certain sapient father of all pike further up the river, and showed her where and how to cast the line.

Alas, it was not so simple, after all, this catching of fish.

First she lost a hook on a root; then it seemed to her that ages passed in which nothing whatever happened and this was followed by the discovery that her hook had entirely been stripped of bait without her suspecting it. At last there came a bite, a deep, determined tug, which she answered with a hysterical pull, hurling through the air and into the thistles far back of her a wretched little bull-head which they were unable to find for a long time, and which miserably stung her thumb with its fin when she finally did find it.

After this exploit Annie must try, and she promptly twitched her line into the tree overhead. And so the day went forward, with light-hearted laughter and merriment, with the perfect happiness which the sunshine and color and perfume of June can bring alone to the young.

They grew a trifle more serious at dinner time. It was in the narrow defile where the great jam of logs was, and where the river went down, black and deep, under the rotting wood with a vicious gurgle. Just above the jam there was a mound, velvety now with new grass, and comfortably shaded—a notable spot for dinner and a long rest, and then the girls could watch to much advantage Seth’s fishing from the logs, of which great things were prophesied. Here then the cloth was spread on the grass, the water put on over a fire lighted back of the mound, and the contents of the basket laid in prandial array. It was in truth a meagre dinner, but were appetites ever keener or less critical?

Once during the forenoon, when allusion was made to Seth’s coming departure, Isabel had commanded that nothing be said on that subject all day long. “Let us not think of it at all,” she had said, “but just enjoy the hours as if they would never end. That is the only secret of happiness.” But now she herself traversed the forbidden line.

“How strange it will all seem to you, Seth,” she mused, as she poured out the tea. “As the time draws near, don’t you almost dread it?”

“What I’ve been thinking most about to-day is your coming to the farm to live. It can’t be that you are altogether pleased—after what I’ve heard you say.”

“Oh yes, why not?” said Isabel. “My case is very different from yours. I shall be just as idle as I like. I shall have horses, you know and a big conservatory, and a piano, and all that. We shall have lots of people here all summer long—just think what fishing parties we can make up!—and whenever it gets stupid we can run down to New York. Oh, I’ve got quite beyond the reconciled stage now. I am almost enthusiastic over it. When you come back in a year’s time, you won’t know the place. It will have been transformed into a centre of fashion and social display. I may get to have a veritable salon, you know, the envy and despair of all Dearborn County. Fancy Elhanan Pratt and Sile Thomas in evening dress, with patent leather pumps and black stockings, scowling at Leander Crump, with a crushed hat under his arm, whom they suspect of watering his milk! Oh, we shall be gay, I assure you.”

Seth looked at her attentively, puzzled to know how much of this was badinage, how much sincerity. She smiled archly at him—what a remarkably winning smile she had!—and continued:

“Then Annie will be company for me, too. I mean to bring her out, you know, and make her a leader of society. In a year’s time when you come back and I introduce you to her, you won’t be able to credit your senses, her air will be so distingué, and her tastes so fastidious.”

She ceased her gay chatter abruptly, for Annie had turned away and they could see that her eyes were filling with tears.

Seth bethought him of those earlier tears, the signs of which had been so obvious when they started, and it was natural enough to connect the two.

“Something has happened, Annie,” he said. “Can’t you tell us what it is?”

And then he bit his tongue at having made the speech, for Annie turned a beseeching look at him, then at Isabel, and burst into sobs.

“Isn’t it reason enough that you are going away?” said Isabel. “What more could you ask?”

“No, it isn’t that alone,” protested Annie through her tears. Her pride would not brook the assumption. “There is something else; I can hardly tell you—but—but—my grandmother has suddenly taken a great dislike to Seth; if she knew where I was she would be very angry: I never deceived her, even indirectly, before, but I couldn’t bear not to come after I got to the house, and if I’ve done wrong—”

“Now, now dear” cooed Isabel, leaning over to take Annie’s hands, “what nonsense to talk of wrong; come now, dry your eyes, and smile at us, like a good girl. You are nervous and tired out with the task of tending your grandmother—that’s all—and this day in the woods will do you a world of good. Don’t let us have even the least little bit of unhappiness in it.”

Seth watched his sister-in-law caress and coax away Annie’s passing fit of gloom, with deep enjoyment. The tenderness and beauty of the process were a revelation to him; it was an attribute of womanhood the existence of which he had scarcely suspected heretofore, in his untutored, bucolic state. Annie seemed to forget her grief quickly enough, and became cheerful again; in quaint docility she smiled through her tears at Isabel’s command, and the latter was well within the truth when she cried: “There! You have never looked prettier in your life!”

Seth nodded acquiescence, and returned the smile. But somehow this grief of Annie’s had bored him, and he fel............