Yorke lifts his hat.
"Good-morning," he says.
Her lips move, and her head bends over the child now lying in her arms, and staring with blue eyes up at the big man who dares to address "Miss Lethlie." Leslie's lips move; no doubt she says "good-morning," in response, though he cannot hear her.
"You are early this morning," he says, and he knows that his voice falters and sounds unnatural, as surely as he knows that his heart is beating like a steam-hammer, and that the longing to cry to her, "Leslie, I love you!" is almost irresistible.
"Yes," she says. "It is so beautiful after the rain——."
She stops, for the word has recalled that homeward drive, the storm, his words—all that she has been thinking of through the long night.
"Yes," he says, vaguely, stupidly. Then he says, suddenly, "That child is too heavy for you——."
"Oh, no; I often carry it," she falters, bending still lower over the pretty face enshrined in the yellow curls.
"But it is," he says. "Let me take it, if it must be carried."
"She would not let you," she says.