"You certainly must. And the sooner you put a name to it and let me know what that name is, the better pleased I'll be. If I was the fast and loose sort, or if I'd ever done anything since we hitched up to give you a shadow of distrust, or make you look back in doubt, then it would be different; but this I will swear, that no man ever loved a woman better than I love you, or have been a better or truer lover. I must say that for myself, Dinah, since you've given up saying it." "I did say it and I do say it. You're all right, and you've every reason to be pleased with yourself, Johnny. You're a wonder. But it's me. I'll work at myself. I can't promise more. I'll thresh it out and try to find where I'm wrong; and if you can help me, I'll tell you. It's not a happy thing; but at the same time it's not an unhappy thing--not yet. I owe you a very great deal--only less than your father. I'd sooner make anybody on earth unhappy before you; but it's no good pretending, and I couldn't hide worry from you even if I wanted to." "Leave it then," he said, "and get it off your mind so quick as you can." They talked about other things, and for the most part chimed harmoniously enough; but they did not always agree in their estimate of other people, or in their views of action and conduct. Dinah never conceded anything, nor pretended to see with his eyes if she did not, yet sometimes she praised him if he put a point and changed her own view by enlarging her vision of the subject. John was in a better temper when presently the dusk fell and the lovers, leaving Hazel Rocks, passed through a clearing, reached the road to Buckland and presently climbed again to Falcon Farm, where they were to drink tea with Susan and her father. Soosie-Toosie had a heavy cold in her head and appeared more unsightly than usual. Her large frame shook with her sneezes, and Joe, while humorously concerned for her and anxious that she should take steps to get well, soon dropped the humour for a little genuine trouble on his own account. "There's some people I catch cold from, and there's some I don't catch cold from," he said, "just like some fires you catch heat from and some you never can. But Soosie-Toosie's colds be of the catching order. 'Tis the violence of her sneezes no doubt--like a fowling-piece going off. And though a cold be nought to her and here to-day and gone to-morrow, if I get 'em they run down the tubes and give me brownkitis and lay me by for weeks." "Never seen you look better, Cousin Joe," declared John. "You be always at your fighting best when the woodcock comes back, so father says."