Mr. Longworth overtook me the next day, as I was returning listlessly, toward noon, from a long walk, my arms full of glowing St. John’s wort, the color of sunset.  Back of me lay the long stretch of flat road, and the fields on either side were scorched with the sun.  The heat was intolerable.  Mr. Longworth would carry the flowers for me, and I resigned them, knowing that nothing is more distasteful to a man than to be treated like an invalid.  And the bunch was really a heavy burden,—­I had gathered such an enormous armful, together with some tender creepers of blackberry vine.  We chatted of the place, of the people, and I found that my companion had a keen sense of humor.  As we neared the house, after a moment’s hesitancy, I asked him to come and rest on the little porch, where a couple of splint rockers and a palm-leaf fan invited one to comfort and coolness.  He accepted the invitation with alacrity, though he chose to sit on the wooden steps, while I tilted lazily back and forth, overcome by the noonday lull and heat.

He looked so boyish when he took off his hat, with the dark little curls falling over his forehead, that I thought he could not be older than I. The walk had perhaps been more than he could bear, for he was so pale that I could not help saying, “Pardon me, Mr. Longworth, but you look so ill.  Will you let me give you a glass of wine?” I had brought a little with me.  He looked slightly annoyed, but he answered gayly,

“I suppose Mrs. Hopper has been telling you I am a confirmed invalid.  Indeed I am almost well now, and I need Wilson about as much as I need a perambulator, but I knew if I did not bring him, my mother would give up Bar Harbor, and insist on burying herself with me, either here or at some other doleful spot, stagnation having been prescribed for me.  Oh, well, I don’t mind the quiet,” he continued, leaning his broad shoulders against the pillar, and pulling at a bit of the St. John’s wort, for he had thrown it down in a straggling heap on the floor of the porch.  “I’m at work on—­on a book,” he said with a boyish blush.

“Yes,” I replied, smiling.  “Mrs. Hopper told me that there was ’an orther,’ in Wauchittic.”

“And that was what Mrs. Bangs told me the other day!” he declared audaciously.  And then we both laughed with the foolish gaiety of youth, that rids itself thus of embarrassment.

“It is my first book,” he confessed.

“And mine,” I said.

Our eyes met a little wistfully, as if each were striving to read whether the other had gone through the same burning enthuiasms for work, the same loving belief in its success, the same despondent hours when it seemed an utter failure, devoid of sense or interest, and then, somehow, we felt suddenly a mutual confidence, a sense that we knew each other well, the instant camaraderie of two voyagers who find that they have sailed the same seas, passed through the same dangers, and stopped at the same ports.