"Look here, Lucy Eastman," said Mary Leonard at last, stopping decisively in front of what used to be the Baptist Church, but which was now a business block and a drug-store where you could get peach phosphate, "we can't stand this any longer. Let's get into a carriage right away and go to the old fort; that can't have changed much; it used to be dismantled, and I don't believe they've had time, with all they've done here, to--to mantle it again." They moved towards a cab-stand--of course it was an added grievance that there was a cab-stand--but the wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way. "Mary," said Lucy Eastman, detaining her, "wait a minute. Do you think we might--it's a lovely day--and--there's a grocer right there--and dinner is late at the hotel"--She checked her incoherence and looked wistfully at Mary Leonard. "Lucy, I think we might do anything, if you don't lose your mind first. What is it, for pity's sake, that you want to do?" "Take our luncheon; we always used to, you know. And we can have a hot dinner at the hotel when we come back." Without replying, Mary Leonard led the way to the grocer's, and they bought lavish supplies there and at the bakery opposite. Then they called the cab. "Do you remember, Lucy, we used to have to think twice about calling a cab, when we used to travel together, on account of the expense," said Mary Leonard, as they waited for it to draw up at the curbstone. "Yes," answered Lucy; "we don't have to now." And then they both sighed a little. But their smiles returned as they drove into the enclosure of the old fort. There they lay in the peaceful sun--the gray stones, the few cannon-balls, sunk in the caressing grass, with here and there a rusty gun, like a once grim, sharp-tongued, cruel man who has fallen somehow into an amiable senility. "I read an article in one of the magazines about our coast defences," said Lucy Eastman, breathlessly; "how they ought to be strengthened and repaired and all, and I was quite excited about it and wanted to give a little money towards it, but I wouldn't for anything now, enemy or no enemy." "Nor I, either," said Mary Leonard, after she had dismissed the driver with orders to call for them later in the day. They walked on over the crisp dry grass, and seated themselves on a bit of the fallen masonry. The reaches of the placid river lay before them, and the hum of the alert cricket was in their ears. Now and then a bird flew surreptitiously from one bush to another, with the stealthy, swift motion of flight in autumn, so different from the heedless, fluttering, hither-and-yon vagaries of the spring and early summer. The time for frivolity is over; the flashes of wings have a purpose now; the possibility of cold is in the air, and what is to be done must be done quickly. "We almost always used to come in summer," said Lucy Eastman, "but I think it's every bit as pretty in the fall."