"See the plain away down there. It seems to heave slowly, like the flood after the rain had ceased." "Do people live there?" asked Dolly. "And the sky; did you ever see such sky! And the meadow here, how fresh and lush; and the pines, and the cabin, and the lake--isn't it all quiet and peaceful?" She was silent, and after a while he turned to her. A tear was trembling at the end of one of her long lashes. "Goosie," she whispered, and she snuggled up against him; "Goosie, isn't it a bit--lonely here?" "_We_ won't find it lonely," he answered stoutly, and drew her close within his arms. The day drawled on, slowly and deliciously. "Let's take a little walk," said Dolly, after a while. "All right," said Charles-Norton, "I guess I still know how. I haven't walked much lately." "I suppose not," said Dolly, hesitatingly. They were going side by side across the meadow, and Charles-Norton could feel her looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "I suppose--you have been--doing something else." "Yes," laughed Charles-Norton, flushing a bit; "yes--something else." Somehow they did not look at each other for a time after that, and walked a bit apart. They drew together again little by little as they wandered over the clearing, in a close examination of their domain, which Charles-Norton, with his passion for big flights and sweeping outlooks, had up to now neglected. They found a miniature cascade that purled over a mossy log; a cave, so small and clean and regular that it seemed not the work of the big Nature about them, but of delicate, elfin hands; and then, on the edge of forest and grass, a flower, a trembling white chalice upon the virginal bosom of which one small touch of color burned like a flame. And thus, little step after little step, they went from little wonder to little wonder. Dolly liked small things; it was the microscopic aspect of Nature that touched her heart; she had an adjective all her own for such: they were "baby" things--baby flowers, baby brooks, baby stars. This appealed less to Charles-Norton, hungry for big sweeps. And even now, he caught himself yawning once, and casting a look at the crest far away. In the afternoon, in the full warmth of the clear sun, he inveigled her into the lake for a swim. They splashed in the silver waters like merman and mermaid; and when, after a glistening disappearance within the cabin, Dolly emerged again, she was tucked in a fuzzy bathrobe that made her look like a little bear.