She was always delighted whenever Walter requested the pleasure of her company through the grounds. She would take his arm without any unnecessary coquetry, and full of life and love they would thread every walk of the labyrinth, not excepting the Catharine-wheels and the gothic arches. In the grove they would listen to the songs of the birds, and together wonder what they were saying to each other, and invent many strange translations, interesting to none but themselves. They would stand long on the edge of the pond, and Alice leaned heavily on the clerk’s arm, you may be sure, as they watched the gold-fish darting across the little basin so rapidly that the whole surface of the water seemed marked with red lines. He gathered flowers for her, too, as they walked leisurely along, and each bouquet thus formed was, to her, a whole book of love, each flower telling its own particular tale. As the sun touched the horizon they would climb up to the arbor, while the birds sung their “good-night,” and watch the bright colors grow and fade upon the western sky, and build landscapes and cathedrals and cottages of the ever-changing clouds. Yet in his conversations with her, Walter was never sickly sentimental or flattering. He always spoke just what he felt; and sometimes a plump, downright honest thought would find itself clothed in words, which many would call coarse and ill-bred; but from him they came so frankly that she never thought of such a thing, but liked him the more for them. He never flattered her, never told her how beautiful she was, but his whole manner was a tacit acknowledgment of her beauty, truer and plainer than words could express it. And Alice was as simple, and talked as plainly to him as if he had been a brother. O, those evening walks were beautiful to both, but they were laying a foundation for something deeper and more lasting than common friendship, notwithstanding Harry Wilson and the two good fathers. Their natures were gradually blending into each other like two neighboring colors of the rainbow, and the line between them would soon become extinct, and a separation must be the destruction of both. It was very strange that Old John, with his brotherly intentions toward Harry Wilson’s father, didn’t observe this, for he often surprised them earnestly conversing in the sunset arbor, long after the dews had begun to fall and the birds had ceased their evening song. He must indeed have been very dull and stupid, not to observe that something was going on between the two young people, that would play the deuce with his darling project. But no, he didn’t seem to; for he was never in better spirits than then, never half so talkative or playful. He evidently did not think his cherished scheme was about to miscarry.