“He ’phoned a while ago, but I have to go to the dressmaker.” “Are you going to be there long?” “Not so very.” “May I wait and will you take a walk with me? It’s just the kind of a day for a walk.” “I think I should love to,” she answered. And within she was conscious of both happiness and guilt. She made haste and it was not long before she was back, sauntering slowly by Jack’s side, and keeping in step without effort. “Betty, do you know you walk like a boy, and don’t we step nicely together?” Jack asked her, leaning down to peep into her eyes under the broad hat. “I’ve always heard that people who keep step uniformly are well matched,” he continued. “I believe I can keep step with most anyone,” she answered, catching the significance of his words. “But not so nicely as with me, I’m confident,” he replied. “Don’t you hate to see the trees lose their leaves?” asked Betty to turn the subject, as she would divert a naughty child from something that exasperated it. “It is always such a sad season to me,” she continued. “Fall isn’t always a sad season, but this one is especially so,” said Jack wickedly, “because the trees are losing their leaves and so am I losing my little friend.” “Will I be lost, just because I’m married?” “In a way.” “Oh no, you must come to see us even more often than you come now, and bring Sarah with you. By the way, where is Sarah? She has not been around for a week?” “Indeed I don’t know,” was the indifferent reply, and this very attitude of indifference particularly pleased Betty. She resolved somewhere within her (if she could keep Walter from finding it out), to hold Jack’s admiration at all costs. They walked, chatted and laughed away the time until darkness completely overtook them. Walter did not hear of the little escapade; and if he had he was by nature too gentle, kind and unsuspecting to have thought long or hard of it. After the wedding the young pair settled down in a lovely old colonial home, which spread itself against a hill in a rambling fashion. It was made conspicuous and inviting by a new coat of paint. Their choice had fallen upon this house, because of Betty’s admiration of its finely detailed mantels, the broad stair, the quaint colonial windows, the box-wood garden, and the rustic spring house, with the little stream bordered by a row of weeping willows, whose boughs drooped so low that they seemed to be replenishing the brook with their tears. Here Betty learned to know Walter. He taught her to love the out-of-doors. He patiently labored to teach her the correct strokes in golf and tennis, although he himself was handicapped in his participation in these games. In the evenings he tried to pick up the threads of his and her neglected education--he sought diligently to teach her to love the best in literature. And taking his life as a whole it centered about this little creature whom God had made too perfect in form and face.