She did not open her eyes when she heard a step and her name called. She knew without taking the trouble to look that George had come home, found her luggage in her room, and was hunting for her. She heard him come closer and knew when he seated himself that he was watching her, but she did not care enough even to move. Finally she shifted her position to rest herself, opened her eyes, and looked at him without a word. He returned her gaze steadily, smiling gravely. She had never seen him looking so well. He had put in the summer grooming himself, he had kept up the house and garden, and spent all his spare time on the ravine, and farming on the shares with his mother's sister who lived three miles east of them. At last she roused herself and again looked at him. "I had your letter this morning," she said. "I was wondering about that," he replied. "Yes, I got it just before I started," said Kate. "Are you surprised to see me?" "No," he answered. "After last year, we figured you might come the last of this week or the first of next, so we got your room ready Monday." "Thank you," said Kate. "It's very clean and nice." "I hope soon to be able to offer you such a room and home as you should have," he said. "I haven't opened my office yet. It was late and hot when I got home in June and Mother was fussing about this winter--that she had no garden and didn't do her share at Aunt Ollie's, so I have farmed most of the summer, and lived on hope; but I'll start in and make things fly this fall, and by spring I'll be sailing around with a horse and carriage like the best of them. You bet I am going to make things hum, so I can offer you anything you want." "You haven't opened an office yet?" she asked for the sake of saying something, and because a practical thing would naturally suggest itself to her. "I haven't had a breath of time," he said in candid disclaimer. "Why don't you ask me what's the matter?" "Didn't figure that it was any of my business in the first place," he said, "and I have a pretty fair idea, in the second." "But how could you have?" she asked in surprise. "When your sister wouldn't give me your address, she hinted that you had all the masculine attention you cared for; then Tilly Nepple visited town again last week and she had been sick and called Dr. Gray. She asked him about you, and he told what I fine time you had at Chautauqua and Chicago, with the rich new friends you'd made. I was watching for you about this time, and I just happened to be at the station in Hartley last Saturday when you got off the train with your fine gentleman, so I stayed over with some friends of mine, and I saw you several times Sunday. I saw that I'd practically no chance with you at all; but I made up my mind I'd stick until I saw you marry him, so I wrote just as I would if I hadn't known there was another man in existence." "That was a very fine letter," said Kate.