The Journalist turned part way round in his chair, and proffered her a perfectly huge olive as though it had been a crown jewel. When he spoke again, his voice was almost as low as the voice of the man who was talking transmigration of souls. But his smile was a great deal kinder. "Don't you find any Romance at all in your woods?" he asked a bit drawlingly.
"No," said the Girl; "that's the trouble. Of course, when I was small it didn't make any difference; indeed, I think that I rather preferred it lonesome then. But this last year, somehow, and this last autumn especially—oh, I know you'll think I'm silly—but two or three times in the woods—I've hoped and hoped and hoped—at the turn of a trail, or the edge of a brook, or the scent of a camp fire—that I might run right into a real, live Hunter or Fisherman. And—one night I really prayed about it—and the next morning I got up early and put on my very best little hunting suit—all coats and leggings and things just like yours, you know—and I stayed out all day long—tramping—tramping—tramping, and I never saw any one. But I did get a fox. Yes!—and then—"
"And then what?" whispered the Journalist very helpfully.
The Girl began to smile, but her lips were quite as red as a blush. "Well—and—then," she continued softly, "it occurred to me all of a sudden that the probable reason why the Man-Who-Was-Meant-for-Me didn't come was because he—didn't know I was there!" She began to laugh, toying all the while a little bit nervously with her ice-cream fork. "So I thought that perhaps—if I came down to New York this winter—and then went home again, that maybe—not probably you know, but just possibly—some time in the spring or summer—I might look up suddenly through the trees and he would be there! But I've been ten days in New York and I haven't seen one single man whom I'd exactly like to meet in the woods—in my little hunting suit."
"Wouldn't you be willing to meet me?" pried the Journalist injudiciously.
The Girl looked up and faltered. "Why, of course," she hurried, "I should be very glad to see you—but I had always sort of hoped that the man whom I met in the woods wouldn't be bald."
The Journalist choked noisily over his salted almonds. His heightened color made him look very angry.
"Oh, I trust I wasn't rude," begged the Woodland Girl. Then as the Journalist's galloping laughter slowed down into the gentlest sort of a single-foot smile, her eyes grew abruptly big and dark with horror. "Why, I never thought of it," she stammered, "but I suppose that what I have just said about the man in the woods and my coming to New York is—'husband hunting.'"
The Journalist considered the matter very carefully. "N—o," he answered at last, "I don't think I should call it 'husband hunting' nor yet, exactly, 'the search for the Holy Grail'; but, really now, I think on the whole I should call it more of a sacrament than a sport."
"O—h," whispered the Girl with a little sigh of relief.