It takes time to set a table when neither is just certain where things are to be found. Hunting together in sideboard, cupboards, and on pantry shelves brings about a feeling of knowing each other very well. There was so much, too, to talk about. "Do you remember--" it was Alexina pausing with a goblet in hand to ask it. "Have you forgot--" King, producing a carving set, would rejoin. Presently she paused. Twice she started to speak, hesitated, then said, "There's a thing I want to ask you, or, rather, want to say--" Her voice was a little tremulous and breathless. "Yes." "You remember--that is, you haven't forgot the 'King William'?" She was looking away from him and he looking at her, his mouth odd, yet smiling, too. She was an honest and a pleasant thing to look upon. "Yes," he told her, "as well as I remember the raft we put off on from the desert island and the plains back of the stable--have you forgotten the trackless plains where we sat down to starve in the snow, with never a sign of deer or buffalo for days, or even a thing on wing? We'd just lighted on Hiawatha those days. There was an Indian, by the way, came up from the grass water yesterday and brought us venison for to-day." It was evident he did not mean to let her return to the subject. Presently Alexina untied the apron. "I must see your mother some," she said. "But she does not want you," declared his mother's son; "she's overjoyed to think you're with me. She thinks there is something deficient in her son; she insists I've never spoken to a girl since we left you in Louisville. Besides, she's in the kitchen, I hear her out there now, all fluttered herself and fluttering Aunt Mandy." But Alexina would go. "I must call Molly in time for dinner," she insisted. CHAPTER FOUR Now William Leroy supposed Mrs. Garnier to be in his mother's room. A moment later he followed Alexina up the stairs, meaning to get something out of his desk which he wished to show her. He was a most direct youth, considering that he was, by his mother's confession, a timorous one. There was an odd little smile about his mouth, perhaps because all things looked pleasant right now. His nature was practical rather than sanguine, and built in general only on things achieved, but to-day the fruit was hanging golden on the trees and the grove was one of the few new ones in bearing. He had anticipated the railroad by several years in planting, and now the grove and house were going to bring a figure larger than he ever had hoped for. As the Israelites yearned for Canaan, he was looking towards the pastoral lands of Kentucky. To-day, for the once, he would let this new buoyancy, this unanalyzed optimism run warm in his blood; why not? He was young, he was strong, he was master of his circumstances for the first time.