I reflected.  It wasn’t so awfully far back to Port Vigor.  A flivver from the local garage could spin me back there in a couple of hours at the most.  But somehow it seemed more fitting to go to the Professor’s rescue in his own Parnassus, even if it would take longer to get there.  To tell the truth, while I was angry and humiliated at the thought of his being put in jail by Andrew, I couldn’t help, deep down within me, being rather thankful.  Suppose he had been in the wreck?  The Sage of Redfield had played the part of Providence after all.  And if I set out right away with Parnassus, I could get to Port Vigor—­well, by Monday morning anyway.

The good people of the Moose Hotel were genuinely surprised at the hurry with which I dispatched my lunch.  But I gave them no explanations.  Goodness knows, my head was full of other thoughts and the apple sauce might have been asbestos.  You know, a woman only falls in love once in her life, and if it waits until she’s darn near forty—­well, it takes! You see I hadn’t even been vaccinated against it by girlish flirtations.  I began to be a governess when I was just a kid, and a governess doesn’t get many chances to be skittish.  So now when it came, it hit me hard.  That’s when a woman finds herself—­when she’s in love.  I don’t care if she is old or fat or homely or prosy.  She feels that little flutter under her ribs and she drops from the tree like a ripe plum.  I didn’t care if Roger Mifflin and I were as odd a couple as old Dr. Johnson and his wife, I only knew one thing:  that when I saw that little red devil again I was going to be all his—­if he’d have me.  That’s why the old Moose Hotel in Bath is always sacred to me.  That’s where I learned that life still held something fresh for me—­something better than baking champlain biscuits for Andrew.

* * * * * * * * *

That Sunday was one of those mellow, golden days that we New Englanders get in October.  The year really begins in March, as every farmer knows, and by the end of September or the beginning of October the season has come to its perfect, ripened climax.  There are a few days when the world seems to hang still in a dreaming, sweet hush, at the very fulness of the fruit before the decline sets in.  I have no words (like Andrew) to describe it, but every autumn for years I have noticed it.  I remember that sometimes at the farm I used to lean over the wood pile for a moment just before supper to watch those purple October sunsets.  I would hear the sharp ting of Andrew’s little typewriter bell as he was working in his study.  And then I would try to swallow down within me the beauty and wistfulness of it all, and run back to mash the potatoes.