"Playing with the road! Playing with the road!" Donelle repeated. "Oh! but you are queer. What did you play, Tom Gavot?" "Oh! I sent people up and down it. The people I did not like I sent down and never let them come back." "That is perfectly lovely. Go on, Tom." "And then I made up my mind that when I was big enough I’d run away with my mother. I always meant to explain to her about the road, but I didn’t. Sometimes I fancied that people would come over the road bringing to me the things I wanted." "What things, Tom?" "Oh! all sorts of things that boys want and don’t get. After I grew older and Father Mantelle began to teach me, I still felt as if the road was a friend, but I did not play with it any more. Then one summer some surveyors and engineers came and one man, he was a great sort, let me talk to him and he made me think about roads in quite another way. I tell you, my road had got pretty rutty, so I began filling in the holes. It was the only decent thing I could do when I’d used it so; and besides it kept me near the men and they helped me to know things that I really wanted." "What, Tom Gavot?" "Why, I want to learn how to make roads. When I can, I am going away and I’m not coming back until I can do more than fill in holes." "I shall miss you dreadfully when you go!" said Donelle. It all seemed imminent and real to her now. "Of course you must go, but—well, the road will be pretty lonely until you come back." Then the girl looked up. "I sort of feel," she said whimsically, "that I ought to be the right kind—of a girl to walk on your road, Tom Gavot." "Well, you are." "No, I haven’t told Mamsey that I know you. I’ve come with Nick when Mamsey was off on the farm. She thinks I’m spinning or weaving, but I hurry through and get out. I’ve hoped that someone would tell her, but they haven’t." "Would she mind if she knew?" asked Tom, and his dark face reddened. "I don’t know, but I think I must _think_ she would or I would have told. She and I talk of everything right out; everything but you." For a moment the two walked on in silence. Then Tom spoke. "You’d better tell her," he said. Then with a brave attempt at cheerfulness: "When I come back, Donelle, all the world can see us walking on the road and it won’t matter." "I’m going to tell Mamsey to-day," murmured Donelle. Somehow she felt as if she had wronged Tom. "This very day." Gavot looked into her face. He suddenly felt old and detached as if he had got a long way ahead of her on the road. "Your eyes are a strange colour," he said, "they look as if there was a light behind them shining through." They both laughed at that, and then Donelle whistled Nick to her and turned. "I’m going to tell Mamsey," she said, "good bye." Tom looked after her and his eyes grew hard and lonely. "Good-bye," he repeated. "Good-bye," but the girl was out of sight.