To which he returned smilingly: "But it is quite grown over now, isn't it? You could scarcely come through there now as you used to do--could you?" The woman laughed again. "I could if I were a man"--she challenged. A moment later he stood beside her; a little breathless, with his clothing disarranged, and a scratch or two on his face and hands. "Do you know"--she said when they had shaken hands quite properly as grown up people must do--"do you know that I was dreadfully afraid to meet you? When they told me that you were here I wanted to go away again. I was afraid that you would be so different. Do you understand?" "Yes," he said, gravely, "I understand." But he did not tell her, then, how fully he understood. She went on: "But when I looked through the hedge and saw you with your hat off, watching the birds, I knew you were the same little boy--and--well--I could not resist giving the old call." And, all at once, the man knew why he had risen early that morning and why he had gone into the garden. After that, they spent many days together in the scenes of their childhood; living over again, so far as man and woman may, their Yesterdays. And so cane, at last, the day that was forever after, to them, _the_ day of all their days. It was in the afternoon and they were together down by the little brook, in the shade of the willows, where the stream, running lazily under the patches of light and shade, murmured drowsily--seeming more than half asleep. She was weaving an old time daisy chain from a great armful that he had helped her gather on their way to the cool retreat. A bit of fancy work that she had brought from the house lay neglected near his hat, which the man, boy like, had cast aside. He was industriously fishing for minnows, with a slender twig of willow for a rod, a line of thread from her sewing, and a pin, that she had found for him, fashioned into a hook. With a pointed stick he had dug among the roots of the old tree for bait--securing one, tiny, thin, worm and rejoicing gleefully at his success. For a long time neither had said a word; but the woman, her white fingers busy with the daisies in her lap, had several times looked up from her pretty task to smile at the man who was so intensely and seriously interested in his childish sport. "Gee! I nearly got one that time!" He exclaimed with boyish triumph and disappointment in his voice. The woman laughed merrily. "One would think," she said, "that your fame in life depended upon your catching one of those poor little fish. What do you suppose your dear, devoted, public would say if they could see you now?" The man grunted his disapproval. "I came out here to get away from said public," he retorted. "Why do you drag 'em into our paradise?" At his words, a warm color crept into the woman's face, and, bending low over the daisies in her lap, she did not answer.