Baird agreed with him. He liked to win a man, particularly an intelligent, unassuming man like Coats Penniman. He set himself to do so, and found that Coats, for some unexplainable reason, was willing to be friendly. They found plenty to talk about, even for the length of four miles up the Post-Road, and, when Coats chose the longer way round, by the front road, Baird kept on with them, as far as the club house. He had decided that he liked Coats Penniman, and that it was pleasant riding in this slow way through the leafy scents of May, particularly with anything as lovely to look at as Ann. Ann had been sufficiently surprised to pay attention to the conversation for a time, to notice that Baird was not at all handsome, not like Garvin or Edward, but broad-shouldered and strong-featured. His eyes were too cold a gray, his nose too aquiline, his cheek-bones too high, and his upper lip too long. And he had entirely too much jaw. Yet, for some reason, he was attractive, at any rate while he talked; his voice was deep but not at all harsh. So Ann decided, then looked off over the country and thought of the one overwhelming thing, the night before--and of Edward. The Post-Road was shut in by trees in some places, but there were long stretches where the country sloped away on either side, pastures vivid with spring green, alternating with reddish brown plowed fields and orchards that already showed patches of color, cherry and peach bloom. The green of the woods seemed to darken even while she watched, they were growing so rapidly into full leaf. In a few days the woods would be sprayed with white, a riot of dogwood. And the wood-honeysuckle was coming into pink bloom everywhere; and millions of violets and wild pansies. The grass in the groves was thick with forget-me-nots, and the creek hollows white and yellow and pinky-green with blood-root, adder's-tongue and Jack-in-the-pulpit. Every other spring she had roamed the country; this spring she had forgotten the flowers. She knew where the wild pansies grew the largest and most of them had the velvety upper petals that proclaimed them pansies and not violets; and where the rare white violets were to be found. As they crossed the bridge where, some twenty feet below, the creek that skirted the Mine Banks tumbled over big rocks, Ann remembered in a vague way, as one thinks of something years past, that she used to find white violets in the soft spaces between the rocks. She thought much more vividly of how dangerous the bridge was, without any side rails, simply a planking and that none too wide; a careless turn on a dark night, and an automobile could easily be dashed to pieces below. It would be dreadful if anything happened to Garvin.