Jack threw his head back and roared.

“Oh,” he said after a minute, “you are so refreshing.  You ruffle me up just to give me the joy of smoothing me down, don’t you?”

“I do what I can to amuse you,” she said, demurely.  “You are my father’s guest and my brother’s friend, and so I ought to—­oughtn’t I?”

“Yes,” he said, “I have a two-fold claim on you if you look at it that way and some day I mean to go to work and unfold still another.”

They had come to a delightful little nook where the trees sighed gently, “Sit down,” and there seemed to be no adequate reason for refusing the invitation.

“Let’s rest, I know you’re tired,” the young man said gently, and the next minute found his companion down upon the soft grass, her back against a twisted tree-root and her hands about her knees.

He threw himself down beside her and the hush and the song of mid-summer were all about them, filling the air, and their ears, and their hearts all at once.

Presently he took her hand up out of the grass where its fingers had wandered to hide themselves, and kissed it.  She looked at him reprovingly when it was too late, and shook her head.

“Such a little one!” he said.

“I call it a pretty big one,” she answered.

“I mean the hand—­not the kiss,” he said smiling.

“You really are sophisticated,” she told him.  “Only fancy if you had reversed those nouns!”

“I know,” he said; “but I’ve kissed hands before.  You see, I’m more talented than you think.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said smiling.  “I really am beginning to think very well of you.  You don’t want me to cease to, do you?”

“Why do women always say ’Don’t be silly’?” he queried.  “I wish I could find one who wanted to be very original, and so said, ‘Do be silly’, just for a change.”

“Dear me, if women were to beg men to be silly what would happen?” Mrs. Rosscott exclaimed.  “The majority are so very foolish without any special egging on.”

“But it is so dreadfully time-worn—­that one phrase.”

“Oh, if it comes to originality,” she answered, “men are not original, either.  Whenever they lie down in the shade, they always begin to talk nonsense.  You reflect a bit and see if that isn’t invariably so.”

“But nonsense is such fun to talk in the shade,” he said, spreading her fingers out upon his own broad palm.  “So many things are so next to heavenly in the shade.”

“You ought not to hold my hand.”

“I know it.”

“I am astonished that you do not remember your Aunt Mary’s teaching you better.”

“She never forbade my holding your hand.”

“Suppose anyone should come suddenly down the path?”

“They would see us and turn and go back.”

“To tell everyone—­”

“What?”

“A lie.”

Jack laughed, folded her hand hard in his, and drew himself into a sitting posture beside her knee.