Peter laughed, looking off for a moment toward the drawing-room. "I ’m an outdoor sort of chap, I think," he said. "Yet it’s very pretty, all that down there, and I like to look at it. Miss Townsend, do you ride horseback much?" "Sometimes--not often. I don’t care for it." "Neither should I, down the boulevard or in the park, but out on a country road. I ’m a country boy, and I like a good gallop down the old Northboro Road--miles of it as smooth as a floor. As for cross-country--ah, there’s sport!" "I ’ve never seen you ride." Peter’s face changed. "No, I don’t ride now," he said. "But you have Saturday afternoons free?" "Oh, yes." "There are three saddle-horses in the stable," said Olive, making a sudden resolve, "and only one of them gets much use. Would you--care to take me for a gallop down the Northboro Road some day?" That she should make such a proposition as this would have seemed to Olive Townsend but an hour before preposterous. But now, looking up at the sturdy figure before her, noting the wistful smile with which Peter had spoken of past experiences, it had come to her all at once that a new pleasure might be hers. She saw plainly that she should not be ashamed of Peter as an escort anywhere. Peter stared at his hostess for a moment as if he could hardly believe that he had heard aright. "Do you really mean that, Miss Townsend?" he asked. "Indeed I do. I ’m not in the habit of saying things I don’t mean." "Then, thank you, I should like it immensely," he said, with a smile and bow, more attractive, Olive admitted to herself, than any she had received that evening. CHAPTER VI WEEDS AND FLOWERS "Good morning, Miss Jane Bell! May I come in?" Jane lifted her head quickly from over the phlox-bed she was weeding in the little garden back of the house, to see Forrest Townsend looking over the wooden gate which shut away the garden from the surrounding neighborhood. "Good morning! Yes, indeed, come in," she responded blithely, waving a discarded white ruffled sunbonnet at her guest. He vaulted over the low barrier and came swinging down the narrow path to the end of the enclosure, where the phlox-bed lay. Here he stood still, regarding with favour the girl in the blue dress, whose bronze-tinted hair glinted in the early June sunlight. "Always busy at something, are n’t you?" he said, tipping over a bushel-basket half-filled with weeds, and seating himself upon it. "Yes, I know I ’ve spilled out the weeds, but I ’ll pick ’em up again when I ’m through. I came over to have a serious talk with you, and I ’ve got to be down here near you, where I can look you in the eye. The grass is too damp yet to sit on in white trousers." Jane laughed. "It can’t be a very serious matter that’s troubling you, or you would n’t think of your clothes."