Were these two in love? A city groom, used to ride behind many a preening pair in their smart T-cart, seasoned and wearied with his master’s catechism of flirtation, which he had so often overheard; being there in theory to play propriety, but in fact, as he well knew, only as a license to flirt, much as a policeman is stationed in the Park for the skating when the ice is thin--such a groom would have said No. For they hardly ever look at one another. But perhaps an older groom, good dan Cupid himself, the blind passenger who perches like dark care on so many a horse’s back, and drives dark care away--he might answer Yea: for they are not flirting. Now, there are several legitimate states of being in love, as videlicet, to be in love and know it, to be in love and not know it, to know that she loves you and to think that you love her, to be in love, but with another person than the one you think:--but to know it and not be in love is but a modern and puerile intellectual trifling; this we call flirtation. And in that these two were surely not. Were they then simply indifferent to one another? Unlikely--so early in the morning. And surely, the cosmic chances are all in our favor: is it not the normal relation, to be in love? Given, a young man of twenty-one and a lovely girl some few months younger--and the uplands, and the forest, and the sun, moon, stars, storm and springtime--and show me one such younker not in love and you will show me a wretched fellow you had best avoid. No such selfish saint or sordid sinner can this slender Arthur be, who turns in his saddle and shows the clear-cut New English profile with the delicate but winning smile. But see, the smile has faded into earnestness; leaning yet farther from the saddle, he is looking up into his companion’s face, and seeming to be searching for something there. Does he find it? Ah, Cupid, good dan Cupid, were you right once more? or were we both too hasty--for she has not blushed, but the one rounded cheek we see, as we press after them, grows quickly pale, and we can just make out the dark eye-lashes that droop quickly down, breaking the contour; and now they do not speak again, but ride at the run in mutual silence--oh, a silence that is surely mutual, if ever silence was--and we have much to do, being old and no longer in love, to keep behind these two, who do not dally. This was all that happened in the ride. Only, coming home, and both dismounting (she without waiting for his aid) and he taking her hand to say good-morning (as he had done a hundred times before, that very summer) the color mounted in the young girl’s face (as it had never done before) so that she turned the face aside which was too near her heart, and ran indoors in haste and left him there.