“Yes, indeed; I thought you might keep me waiting at the gate, so I put on my furs.”
The drive went on through the grounds to a sloping pasture, where it became a rough roadway. The day was perfect. The sharp edges of November were tempered by a bright sun, and the crisp air was possessed of a profound quiet. When the pastoral stretches ended in the woods, David stopped suddenly.
“It must have been just about here,” he said, 235 reminiscently, as he hitched the horse to a tree and held out his hand to Carey. They walked on into the depths of the woods until they came to a fallen tree.
“Let us sit here,” he suggested.
She obeyed in silence.
An early frost had snatched the glory from the trees, whose few brown and sere leaves hung disconsolately on the branches. High above them was an occasional skirmishing line of wild ducks. The deep stillness was broken only by the scattering of nuts the scurrying squirrels were harvesting, by the cry of startled wood birds, or by the wistful note of a solitary, distant quail.
“Do you remember that other––that first day we came here?” he asked.
She glanced up at him quickly.
“Is this really the place where we came and you told me stories?”
“You were only six years old,” he reminded her. “It doesn’t seem possible that you should remember.”