Only the whippoorwill answered, calling now from a clump of elderberry bushes close by the water’s edge, and while she stood listening, there was the dull splash in the pond where some big bullfrog had taken alarm at her coming.

Billie gathered a goodly supply of apples, and stole after her in the shadows.

“Well, I’m not going to stay out here all night waiting for you,” Kit said, decisively, addressing the wide dark entrance to the mill, when all at once there came his voice, directly behind her shoulder.

“Why didn’t you try to catch me?  I was resting back under the apple tree.  Let’s sit down over the falls and eat some.  If Piney’s waiting for me to kneel in front of her, she’ll wait all night.  I’d like to see myself kneeling in front of a girl!”

The words had hardly left his lips, before Kit played an old-time schoolgirl trick on him.  Catching him by his collar, she twirled him about with an odd twist until he knelt in front of her.  Although they were just about of an age, she was taller and stronger, and Billie shook himself ruefully when he rose.

“You always catch a fellow off guard,” he said.

“Do you good,” she retorted serenely.  “Ever since you went away to school, you’ve had a high and mighty opinion of yourself.  I don’t know what will become of you after I’ve gone away, and there’s no one who really knows how to make you behave.  Aren’t these apples bully though?  Do you suppose they’ll mind very much if we stay just a few minutes?  Don’t you love this old pond, Billie?  Remember your flat-bottomed boat that always leaked when we used to go fishing in it.  How I hated to take turns bailing it out.”

Billie dipped into his inner coat pocket and drew forth a little leather bill fold, somewhat sheepishly.

“I’ve got a snap shot here that I wanted you to take out with you.  It’s funny you just happened to speak about it.  That hat nearly covered your face, but anybody could tell it was you, Kit.  It was the day we got caught in the rain, when we were out after pickerel, and when the sun came out, Ben came along, and snapped us with my camera.”

Kit took the little photograph in her hand.  There was plenty of light to see it by.  The little old, red, flat-bottomed boat out in midstream, with Billie standing, barelegged to his knees, straddling from the stem seat to the rear middle one, while he strove persuasively with a big pickerel.  Kit was half kneeling in the other end of the boat, bailing for dear life, dressed in an old middy and wash skirt, with a boy’s farm hat pulled low over her eyes.

“Wouldn’t it be strange, Billie, if either of us were famous some day,” she said, thoughtfully, “and this picture would just be priceless?  You know, that’s one thing awfully nice about us two.  We’ve always appreciated each other so much.  I know you’re going to be somebody special.  Maybe it will just be in natural history, but I wish it were exploring, or something awfully adventurous.”