Whereupon Matthew, who was concealed by the thick foliage of the maples, opened the gate softly and sped homeward on the wings of love. She had said to go ahead, that it would be all right. That settled it. He had looked forward to another and a fonder parting when he should take Undine to the station on Friday, but on Thursday, when he went rapturously to Biddeford to engage paperers, painters, and plumbers, the school committee voted to give up the closing exercises on account of illness in the school, and Undine promptly took the train for Greenford, leaving a note for Matthew to the effect that she had been called home suddenly, as her stepfather wanted her to go to Albany with him on a business trip. This was in the nature of a blow, but only a slight one, after all, a disappointment that in no wise affected their relations or their tacit compact with each other; so Matthew plunged into a series of fourteen-hour days of work on his improvements. No man, no three men, could keep up with him. He was omnipresent and untiring, and the labor progressed so rapidly that the village could not restrain its curiosity, all the gentlemen of leisure passing their time in the vicinity of the Milliken house, ready to furnish suggestions or to act as brakes upon inadvisable changes. Meantime no letters passed between the lovers save one note from Undine written in high spirits on the train to Albany. Matt had intended to go to Greenford every second Sunday during the summer, to report progress and keep the slightly unsteady flame of her affection from going out. The Albany visit put a stop to that, of course, and he felt a little helpless as the weeks ran by. He had not the pen of a ready writer, and Undine had once said playfully that she was a bad correspondent and didn't intend to touch either pen or pencil in vacation. Finally Matt spent two hours of strenuous work with the dictionary and wrote to his beloved in Greenford with directions to forward the missive if she were not there. It was a letter that would have melted a heart of stone, though viewed as a composition she would have marked it C4. Then he plunged into the improvements again. His mother wrote approval of the samples of wall-paper he had sent her, and thanked him for selecting the little gray trellis pattern with pink roses on it for her own bedroom, advising him not to work too hard, for Maria Snow had written he was looking pale. "I hope he'll look paler still," thought the crafty old lady, "for that'll mean he can't get that water-sprite to marry him, and he'll take sick and want me to come home to nurse him!"