"I never did like to visit," confessed the girl. "Not unless I went to people I really cared for. When we were little and Mother would take Phil and me to visit relatives or friends I merely liked I'd be there a little while and then I'd tug at Mother's skirt and beg, 'Mom, we want to go home.' I suppose I spoiled many a visit for her. I was self-willed even then." "You are a stubborn person," he said, with so different a meaning that Amanda flushed. "I know I am. And I have a nasty temper, too." "Don't you know," he consoled her, "that a temper controlled makes a strong personality? George Washington had one, the history books say, but he made it serve him." "And that's no easy achievement." The girl spoke from her own experience. "It's like pulling molars to press your lips together and be quiet when you want to rear and tear and stamp your feet." "Well, come down to hard facts, and how many of us will have to admit that we have feelings like that at times? There is still a good share of the primitive man left in our natures. We're not saints. Why, even the churches that believe in saints don't canonize mortals until they have been a hundred years dead--they want to be sure they are dead and their mortal weaknesses forgotten." Amanda laughed. A moment later they turned from the country road and followed a narrower path that was bordered on one side by green fields and on the other by a strip of woods, an irregular arm reaching out from Amanda's moccasin haunt. The road led up-hill at a sharp angle, so that when the traveler reached the top, panting and tired, there stretched before him in delightful panorama a view of Lancaster County that more than compensated for the discomfort and effort of the climb. Amanda and Martin stood facing that sight. Behind them lay the cool, tree-clad hill, before them the blue August sky looked down on Lancaster County farms, whose houses and red barns seemed dropped like kindergarten toys into the midst of undulating green fields. One could sit or stand under the sheltering shade of the trees along the edge of the woods and yet look up to the sky or out upon the Garden Spot and farther off, to the blue, hazy mountain ridge that touched the sky-line and cut off the view of what lay beyond. Martin threw the pillows on the ground and they sat down in the cool shade. "Can anything beat this?" he asked lazily as he ruffled the dry leaves about him with his hands. "You know, Amanda, I could never understand why, with my love for outdoors, I can't be a farmer. When I was a boy I used to consider it the natural thing for me to do as my father did. I did help him, but I never liked the work. You couldn't coax the other boys to the city; they'd rather pitch hay or plant corn. And yet I like nothing better than to be out in the open. During the summer I'm out in the garden after I come home from the city, and that much of working the soil I like, but for a steady job--not for me!"