Mrs. Harbison, when interviewed about the generous portion of time he spent on her lawn with her summer visitor, answered with downrightness, "Well, what if he does like to come to our place? We know all about his folks. And if them two wants to sit and talk, they're fit company fer each other, and I reckon it won't hurt 'em. So what you going to do about it?" The village was going to talk about it. The female population gathered at the storekeeper's house, their favorite rallying-place because the storekeeper's wife had no opinions of her own, but made a good echo to whatever was said, and there they judged that Gill girl for taking up with strangers like she done, so stuck up, and hoped it would turn out he was a married man, and wouldn't that bring her down? Meanwhile, the photographer stretched himself on his oilcloth-cushioned locker and stared at the now fully-unfurled woods, without one mental glance at the vivid moss in its shades, its four varieties of ferns or the ruined cabin with one side thrown down, showing nickers of sunlight through the gaps of its fireplace. He called himself ill names for remaining where he was, and made a crazy picture of a photographic car seesawing along the country roads, with a figure he well knew sitting on the platform beside him as he drove. It was so absurd, but he quoted Mrs. Dalles's song of "Brave Love" while he etched: We could not want for long, While my man had his violin And I my sweet love-song. The world has aye gone well with us, Old man, since we were one: Our homeless wanderings down the lanes, They long ago were done. Then, across some chasm of indefinite time, he saw a studio and himself happy at an easel, with this devoted dark face resting against his side, reciting her work to him and quivering with joy at some sign of success. But the whole panorama dissolved at a breath. "Now, aren't you a nice fellow," he addressed himself, "a brilliant rascal, a wise genius, to be thinking of such a thing?" Miss Gill was returning from the woods with a full basket before the morning heat came on. A few women at the storekeeper's fence looked sidewise at each other as she paused to chat under the photographer's window. The morning was so clear that every object stood in startling relief. A plume of steam far up the leafy railroad vista heralded the Peru express's lightning passage through the town. Scarcely a lounger was left on the platform. Mallston had a job of cleaning the cellar for the storekeeper, and at intervals appeared from its gaping doors with a basket of decayed potatoes on his shoulders. The landscape rung with bird-songs, and the girl, who had skimmed the cream off such a morning, looked up and laughed at her dejected friend. She had purple violets tucked into her coil of hair, her belt and under her collar. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you out trying to catch the effect of day-twilight in the thick woods?"