“Say, but you look sort of like a picter setting there with all them posies, something like the one on the calendar they give with the ‘Rise up bake powder’ when you’ve bought six cans. It’s called ‘The Love Letter,’ only the girl’s got red heels to her shoes and powered-up hair, besides which they’d bought her too small a pattern for her waist to piece it well up in front! “Want ter know! I bet it’s a love letter, his picter and all, and I’m right glad on’t!” Then farmer Fenton chirruped to his horses and went his way, laughing to himself, and turning the tobacco from cheek to cheek with relish, for Brooke had reddened under his banter, and in trying to save the sliding letters in her lap had not only dropped them, but the picture as well (which the farmer barely saw, having no glasses). When she stooped to gather them up, and slipped the picture inside her blouse for safer keeping, a second shadow crossed the road—that of Henry Maarten, following the brook path to the hay-field, but if he saw her in the sheltered bank nook he made no sign; neither did Brooke, but huddled there among the ferns elated, disappointed, and quite bewildered, until the sound of hoof and wheel had died away, and she knew that both men were well within the fence. The words that Enoch Fenton muttered as he walked, talking to himself in lengthy monologue, after the style of those much alone, were these: “Bob Stead! by gosh, he’s been away a month, and what’s more likely than he’s sent his picter and writes reglar? Anyhow, all the women folks this side of Windy Hill and further has planned it so, and so it’s bound to be! Besides which our darter’s boy, Willie, was lookin’ fer wintergreen for mother’s rheumatiz up in North Woods beyond Stony Guzzle two months back, and he spied a couple settin’ by the stream a-holdin’ hands and eatin’ apples. Now if that ain’t courtin’—what is? Though it’s only jest likely hit and miss, wife and Sairy Ann Williams met and pieced together who they wuz. He’s a mum sort, but that’s the kind it takes a girl to get goin’, and he’s well set up, funds and all, though oldish! Well, she might do worse seein’ she’s had a taste o’ pinchin’,” and selecting a fine spear of timothy with which to pick his teeth, Fenton reversed the rake and mounted. Adam had written to Stead several times since his going away, and received cheerful, though brief, replies, which, however, said nothing definite as to his return, and though the time mentioned was a month, the term might be merely nominal. All the household had missed him in their different ways, the Cub with almost girlish sentiment, Mrs. Lawton as a link with the state of life that was, and Brooke chiefly because she was entirely used to him and associated him with so much that had given hope and eased the winter rigour, that the friendship to her had become almost the easy intimacy of relationship.