As we passed from the farmyard and struck into the fields the sun was showing handsomely, and the thrushes were singing their lusty notes. It was as fine a spring morning as the heart could desire. The virginal airs played on our faces; the birds called to one another from hedge to tree; the little lambs frisked among the white daisies in the meads, as hand-in-hand we took our way again. We still had no clear idea as to whither we were going. But we were mightily content wherever our way might lead. The sense we had of our liberty was a something we had never tasted before. Had we not cast off the trammels of the world? We could begin life again; and be whom we chose. We were a pair of unknown persons, moving among unknown people in unknown places. Every hour we passed in these solitudes of nature had something of the glamour of romance invested in it. For we did not know how our next meal would be come by, or what would be the next shelter for our weary heads when nightfall overtook us. But we cared not. We were in the crisp, free, open air, snuffing the sunshine, and trampling across a carpet of flowers over hill and dale, while the spring birds sang. I think we were too desperately happy to talk much. Cynthia was radiant, and as light of foot and heart as the birds that called to us from the green hedges. The words of an appropriate ballad were on her lips: When Strephon wooed his Chloe dear, All in the springtime of the year. And I took the infection of her spirits also, I was sensible, ere we had walked a mile, of a frank, jovial, devil-may-care lightheartedness, not so fresh and buoyant as my little one's perhaps, since I had lived a little longer, had therefore had the brightness of my youth more overlaid with the rust of the world, and had a greater weight of responsibility, more particularly for her, upon my shoulders. It was little I felt it, however. For suddenly as we walked in these sweet fields, an idea was born in my mind that banished everything except the thrill of joy it brought. "My prettiness," says I, "we could not wish for a perfecter wedding morning." "That we could not," says she, so promptly that it struck me she had been expecting some such suggestion from me. Her blushes were adorable, it is true, but I believe they were more a matter of instinct than the offspring of any particular commotion in her bosom. "Wilt marry me, pretty one," says I, "at the first church we come to, that hath a snug parsonage sitting in honeysuckle beside it?" "Ay, that I will," says she, cocking up her thin with an archness of invitation that was not to be denied. I suppose it was that the adventures we had already had together had given us the most perfect understanding of one another. There was a feeling of proprietorship between us; and had not each given up everything in life for the other's sake?