“But you noticed the scar on his face, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I couldn’t very well help doing that,” owned Eve.  “Any more than I could help noticing his hands.”

“So strong looking, aren’t they?” asked Miss Mullett, eagerly.

“Are they?  I thought them rather ugly.”

“Oh, how can you say so?  Just think of all the wonderful things those hands must have done!  And as for the scar, I thought it gave him quite a distinguished air, didn’t you?”

“Carrie Mullett, I am not interested in Mr. Herrick.  If you say another word about him before luncheon—­”

“You can say that if you like,” interrupted Miss Mullett placidly, “but you are interested in him, my dear.”

“Carrie!”

“Then why can’t you write your story?  Oh, you can’t fool me, my dear!”

Eve turned a disdainful back and picked up her pen, resentful of the warmth that she felt creeping into her cheeks.

Miss Mullett smiled and drew a new thread from the skein.

X.

“You observe,” said Wade the next morning, “I come through the gate in the hedge.”

The intermittent showers of yesterday afternoon and night had cleaned the June world, and the four ancient cedars from which the Walton place had received its name, and in the broken shade of which Eve was reading, exhaled a spicy odor under the influence of moisture and warmth.  Eve, a slim white figure against the dark-green of the foliage, the sun flecking her waving hair, looked up, smiled and laid her book down.

“Good morning,” she said.  “Have you come to help me be lazy?”

“If you need help,” he replied.  “I brought these.  They’re not much, but I think they’re the last in the village.”  He handed her a half-dozen sprays of purple lilac, small and in some places already touched with brown.

“Oh,” she said, “they’re lovely!” She buried her face in them and crooned over them delightedly.  Witnessing her pleasure, Wade had no regrets for his hour’s search over the length and breadth of Eden Village.  She laid them in her lap and looked up curiously.  “Where did you get them?  Not from your hedge?”

“Oh, I just stopped at the florist’s as I came along,” he laughed.  “He apologized for them and wanted me to take orchids, but I told him they were for the Lilac Girl.”

“Is that me?” smiled Eve.  “Thank you very much.”  She made a little bow.  “I feel dreadfully impolite and inhospitable, Mr. Herrick, at not asking you to sit down, but—­you see!” She waved a hand before her.  “There’s nothing but the ground, and that’s damp, I’m afraid.  So let us go indoors.  Besides, I must put these in water.”

“Please don’t,” he begged.  “The ground isn’t damp where the sun shines, and I wouldn’t mind if it were.  If I’m not keeping you from your book I’ll sit down here.  May I?”

“You’ll catch rheumatism or ague or something else dreadful,” she warned.