“Look, we get off here!”

“Would you?”

“N-no, silly.”

Within the park new grass was soft as plush under their feet, and once away from the winding asphalt of the main driveway the bosky heart of a dell closed them in, and the green was suddenly dappled with shadow.  Here and there in the cool, damp spots violets lifted their heads and pale wood-anemones, spring’s firstlings.  They sat on a rock spread first with newspaper.  Over their heads birds twitted.

“Somehow, here so far away and all I—­I just can’t get it in my head that I’m really going.”

“I can’t, neither.”

“Naples—­just think!”

“Ain’t it funny, Miss Miriam, but with some girls when you meet them it’s just like you had known them for always, and then again with others somehow a fellow never gets anywheres.”

“That’s the way with me.  I take a fancy to a person or I don’t.”

“That’s me every time.  Once let me get to liking a person, and good night!”

“Me, too.”

“Now take you, Miss Miriam.  From the very minute last night when you opened that door for me, with your cheeks so pink and your eyes so big and bright, something just went—­well, something just went sort of lickety-clap inside of me.  You seen for yourself how I wanted to back out of going to the show with Izz?”

“Yes.”

“It—­it ain’t many girls I’d want to stay home from a show for.”

“Say, just listen to the birds.  If I could trill like that I wouldn’t have to take any lessons in Paris.”

“You sing, Miss Miriam?”

“Oh, a little.”

“Gee! you are a girl after my own heart!  There’s nothing gets me like a little girl with a voice.”

“My teacher says I’m a dramatic soprano.”

“When you going to sing for me, eh?”

“I’ll sing for you some time alrighty.”

“Soon?”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“Maybe after—­after I’ve had some lessons in Paris.”

He was suddenly grave.  “Aw, there you go on that old trip again!  Gee!  I wish I could grab that bag out of your hand and throw it with tickets and all in the lake!”

“You know with me it’s right funny too.  The minute I get something I want, then I don’t want it any more.  Before papa said yes I was so crazy to go, and now that I got the tickets bought I’m not so anxious at all.”

“Then don’t go, Miss Miriam.”

She withdrew her hand and danced to her feet, her incertitude vanishing like a candle flame blown out.  “Look over there, will you—­a redbird!”

“If it ain’t!” and he followed her quickly, high-stepping between violet patches.

“Honest, it’s hard to walk, the violets are so thick.”

“Here, let me pick you a bunch of them to take home, Miss Miriam.  Say, ain’t they beauties!  Look, great big purple ones, and black and soft-looking toward the middle just like your eyes.  Look what beauties—­they’ll keep a long time when you get home, if you wrap them in wet tissue-paper.”