Had he been different she could never have lived, it seemed to her, through the fearful hour of humiliation on the Glen Road. She stooped for a spray of scarlet sumach one early autumn afternoon. They had been looking through the hedges for the first hazel nuts and he was standing beside her when, in some way, the little picture worked its way out of her soft silk blouse and fell at his feet, face up. Fright as terrible and as cold as death laid its hand on Nanny's heart. It seemed to her that she never again could raise her eyes to his. Fortunately her body went through its mechanical duties. She bent, her hand picked up the picture, and her voice of its own accord was explaining: "This belongs to you. I took it the day I was looking over the pictures at Grandma Wentworth's. I should, of course, have returned it long ago but I kept neglecting to do it. It's one of the dearest child pictures I have ever seen." She raised her eyes then, eyes as careless as she could make them. Fright kept the flame of bitter shame from her cheeks and the tremor out of her voice. She held the little picture out to him, forcing her eyes to meet his. And those eyes of his looked down at her, first with wonder and then with a pleased smile, and she knew that he didn't know, didn't understand, saw nothing strange in the incident. He took her calm explanation for the whole truth. The man had absolutely no vanity. "Why, I don't want that," he told her wonderingly. "Are you making a collection of children's pictures?" he asked with such innocent curiosity that Nanny's self-control gave way and she laughed until she cried. He stood by, helpless and puzzled. When Nanny, having gotten to the tears, searched in vain for her handkerchief he gravely offered his. Nanny took it and used it and then looked up at him with eyes as full of laughing despair as his were full of bewilderment. "John Roger Churchill Knight--you will some day be the very death of me." CHAPTER XV INDIAN SUMMER "Well, I guess this is about the last spell of pretty weather we're going to have," sighed Fanny Foster as she sat herself down on Grandma Wentworth's back steps and went right to work helping Grandma sort the herbs and bulbs and the seeds she had been gathering for a whole week. "I'm hoping not," said Grandma, "though when the air is like warm gold dust, and the sun's heat just mellows you through and through, and the last bobolink calls from the hill, why, a body just knows such perfect days can't last. Still, I'm hoping it'll stay a bit longer, though I can't say I'm not ready for cold weather."