'Good girl,' he answered, and he even stood still to watch her carrying it lightly in and out among the trees, and singing as she went. Hildred never let the grass grow under her feet. She was always up and about. The bundle of sticks that pleased my father was only of a piece with all her sunny, helpful ways. She had gathered sticks for Granny hundreds of times before, only it was fated that this bundle should first put a thought into my father's head that he pondered over in his slow way all through the winter. He told it to me one evening in the early spring, as we were going home from work together. I saw him looking round at me once or twice, as if there was something he had a mind to say, if he had known how to set about it. 'Grandmother's got to be an old woman,' he began at last, but after I had said 'yes,' he did not appear for some time to have anything to add. 'We need some one younger to keep the house,' he went on presently. 'I say, Will, do you ever think anything about getting married?' I certainly did think of it very often indeed--a good deal oftener than I cared to tell my father. The question took me so by surprise that I scarcely knew how to answer it. At last I said bashfully, that 'perhaps I might, odd times.' 'Ha! 'cause if so be she's a stirring, thrifty lass, I don't care how soon you do.' 'If I could, I don't know if Hildred would,' I stammered, more astonished than ever, for I had always thought that I should have to make a home of my own, before I could ask Hildred to marry me. My father nodded gravely once or twice when he heard her name. 'I thought as much,' he muttered, more to himself than to me, 'She'll do.' And as we reached home he stopped to say, 'Then you can bring your wife home here whensoever it suits yourself. I'm agreeable, lad, without any more waste of words.' Without any more words with him, but a great many with myself. My wife--Hildred! That soft, sparkling little creature, that no trouble ought to come near--such was my thought then--or sorrow touch. Would she let me try to take care of her? Would she come to the grey old gate-house some day in her butterfly brightness and beauty, and fold her wings there, and be my own? Little Hildred, whom my mother used to love and pet in the old days. It seemed strange that we were longing for her now to fill my mother's place. But would she come? That was the one question. I wearied myself with finding answers to it. Hildred herself, I was sure, little knew all that she was to me. No one had found it out, I believed, except my father, with that odd silent watchfulness of his. Not even Cuthbert--I almost wished he had, that I might have talked to him about it; but he never guessed my one secret, and somehow I could not make up my mind to tell him.