An hour before the appointed time the Colonel was striding impatiently up and down before the Elms, incessantly consulting his watch or wistfully gazing up the gravelled walk. It still lacked several minutes of three, when his heart gave a great jump as he saw Miss Braxton's graceful figure flitting in and out through the shrubbery. She stopped to pluck some roses from a bush that hung over the walk, bending down the richly laden bough so that the flowers made a complete circle about her bright young face, and as she raised her eyes she caught the Colonel gazing at her with such a look of abject idolatry that she laughed and blushed. “You see I am on time,” she cried, gayly, hastening down to the gate and handing him one of her roses. “I am going to the post-office, and you may walk with me if you care to.” If he cared to! Her mere presence beside him, the feeling that he could reach out his hand and touch her, the music of her voice, filled him with a joy of which he had never before dreamed. After they had left the post-office, by mutual direction their footsteps turned from the more crowded thoroughfares, and they walked down a quiet and deserted street where the stones were covered with moss, and where solemn gnarled old trees lined the way on either side and met above their heads, the fresh green leaves murmuring softly together like living things. They reached the end of the old street, and were almost in the country. A wide-spreading chestnut-tree stood before them, around whose giant bole a rustic seat had been built. They walked towards it in silence and sat down side by side. They were entirely alone. A gay young red-bird, his head knowingly cocked on one side, perched in the branches just above them. A belated bumblebee, already heavy laden, hung over a cluster of wild flowers at their feet. A long-legged garrulous grasshopper, undismayed by their presence, uttered his clarion notes on the seat beside them. The inquisitive young red-bird looking down could only see a soft black hat and a white straw hat with flowers about its broad brim. He heard the black hat wondering if any one ever thought of him, to which the straw hat replied softly that it was sure some one did think of him very often. Then the black hat wondered if some one, when it was away, would continue to think of it, and the flowered straw, still more softly, was very, very sure some one would.