It was one morning when all the rest had taken themselves off canoeing that Nan stole away to the woods for a quiet hour. She carried a book and her work, and sought a certain shady nook where the pine-needles made a soft carpet, and a plantation of ferns, a short distance off, was a pleasant thing for the eye to rest upon. A trickling stream wound its way between weedy banks, and in one specially clear and still pool the birds delighted to take a daily dip. It was a charming spot, and one which Nan had come upon suddenly one day when looking for mushrooms. She had been attracted by some curious and brilliantly colored fungi growing beyond the open field where she was, and had penetrated the thicket to discover the pool, the ferns, and all the rest. On this particular morning she had hardly seated herself when she heard a rustling in the pathway which she had worn from the open to her nook, and looking up she saw Dr. Paul.
“Caught you,” he exclaimed. “Aren’t you a sly little somebody to steal off this way and never give an inkling of where you were going? If I hadn’t seen your yellow kerchief in the distance and followed its beckoning flame I might have searched in vain through these pathless woods.”
“And have been a pathless Woods yourself.”
“Oh, come now, call that off. We’ve been having jokes all summer about dense woods and gloomy woods, though I must confess this is the first time pathless has been served up. What were you going to do? Read?”
“Well, I did bring a book.” Nan was too honest to actually declare this to be her main intention, though she did make use of the subterfuge.
“I brought one, too.” He put his hand in his pocket. “Suppose I read while you work. I see you have that pretty feminine thing, a sewing-bag.”
“Oh, I don’t believe I care to work,” Nan answered with a little regret for her unfinished buttercups, “but I should enjoy hearing you read, and in being lazy. What is your book?”
“Oh, something I picked up from Marc’s shelves. I haven’t really looked at it.” He turned the pages over. “Oh, I say, it’s Italian. I only saw the title and didn’t realize that the Dante was in the original. Stupid of me not to open it.”
“He reads Italian then?” Nan was pleased to make this an excuse for talking of her hero.
“Or else picked up the book because he liked the binding. Marc is like that, you know. The utilitarian doesn’t specially appeal to him.”