The Girl began to smile, but her lips were quite as red as a blush. "Well--and--then," she continued softly, "it occurred to me all of a sudden that the probable reason why the Man-Who-Was-Meant-for-Me didn't come was because he--_didn't know I was there_!" She began to laugh, toying all the while a little bit nervously with her ice-cream fork. "So I thought that perhaps--if I came down to New York this winter--and then went home again, that maybe--not probably you know, but just possibly--some time in the spring or summer--I might look up suddenly through the trees and he _would_ be there! But I've been ten days in New York and I haven't seen one single man whom I'd exactly like to meet in the woods--in my little hunting suit." "Wouldn't you be willing to meet me?" pried the Journalist injudiciously. The Girl looked up and faltered. "Why, of course," she hurried, "I should be very glad to see you--but I had always sort of hoped that the man whom I met in the woods wouldn't be bald." The Journalist choked noisily over his salted almonds. His heightened color made him look very angry. "Oh, I trust I wasn't rude," begged the Woodland Girl. Then as the Journalist's galloping laughter slowed down into the gentlest sort of a single-foot smile, her eyes grew abruptly big and dark with horror. "Why, I never thought of it," she stammered, "but I suppose that what I have just said about the man in the woods and my coming to New York is--'husband hunting.'" The Journalist considered the matter very carefully. "N--o," he answered at last, "I don't think I should call it 'husband hunting' nor yet, exactly, 'the search for the Holy Grail'; but, really now, I think on the whole I should call it more of a sacrament than a sport." "O--h," whispered the Girl with a little sigh of relief. It must have been fully fifteen minutes before the Journalist spoke to her again. Then, in the midst of his salad course, he put down his fork and asked quite inquisitively: "Aren't there any men at all up in your own special Maine woods?" "Oh, yes," the Girl acknowledged with a little crinkle of her nose, "there's Peter." "Who's Peter?" he insisted. "Why, Peter," she explained, "is the Philadelphia boy who tutors with my father in the summers." Her youthfulness was almost as frank as fever, and, though taking advantage of this frankness seemed quite as reprehensible as taking advantage of any other kind of babbling delirium, the Journalist felt somehow obliged to pursue his investigations. "Nice boy?" he suggested tactfully. The Girl's nose crinkled just a little bit tighter. The Journalist frowned. "I'll wager you two dozen squirrels out of Central Park," he said, "that Peter is head over heels in love with you!"