“A left-hand blessing on the one that said so!” cried Sandy, with such ardor that she fled to another subject.

“I saw Martha Meech yesterday.  She was talking about you.  She was very weak, and could speak only in a whisper, but she seemed happy.”

“It’s like her soul was in Heaven already,” said Sandy.

“I took her a little picture,” went on Ruth; “she loves them so.  It was a copy of one of Turner’s.”

“Turner?” repeated Sandy.  “Joseph Mallord William Turner, born in London, 1775.  Member of the Royal Academy.  Died in 1851.”

She looked so amazed at this burst of information that he laughed.

“It’s out of the catalogue.  I learned what it said about the ones I liked best years ago.”

“Where?”

“At the Olympian Exposition.”

“I was there,” said Ruth; “it was the summer we came home from Europe.  Perhaps that was where I saw you.  I know I saw you somewhere before you came here.”

“Perhaps,” said Sandy, skipping a bit of bark across the water.

A band of yellow butterflies on wide wings circled about them, and one, mistaking Ruth’s rosy wet fingers for a flower, settled there for a long rest.

“Look!” she whispered; “see how long it stays!”

“It’s not meself would be blaming it for forgetting to go away,” said Sandy.

They both laughed, then Ruth leaned over the boat’s side and pretended to be absorbed in her reflection in the water.  Sandy had not learned that unveiled glances are improper, and if his lips refrained from echoing the vireo’s song, his eyes were less discreet.

“You’ve got a dimple in your elbow!” he cried, with the air of one discovering a continent.

“I haven’t,” declared she, but the dimple turned State’s evidence.

The sun had gone under a cloud as the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, and a light tenderer than sunlight and warmer than moonlight fell across the river.  The water slipped over the stones behind them with a pleasant swish and swirl, and the mint that was crushed by the prow of their boat gave forth an aromatic perfume.

Ever afterward the first faint odor of mint made Sandy close his eyes in a quick desire to retain the memory it recalled, to bring back the dawn of love, the first faint flush of consciousness in the girlish cheeks and the soft red lips, and the quick, uncertain breath as her heart tried not to catch beat with his own.

“Can’t you sing something?” she asked presently.  “Annette Fenton says you know all sorts of quaint old songs.”

“They’re just the bits I remember of what me mother used to sing me in the old country.”

“Sing the one you like best,” demanded Ruth.

Softly, with the murmur of the river ac-companying the song, he began: 

    “Ah!  The moment was sad when my love and I parted,
      Savourneen deelish, signan O! 
    As I kiss’d off her tears, I was nigh broken-hearted!—­
      Savourneen deelish, signan O!”