"That we have met and forgiven each other--without payment."
"Aunt Will," shouted Rick, bursting into the room, "there's the professor in the front hall dripping like a drowned rat. I got the men and ferried him over on the first chance; now they are waiting for Mr. Lockhart."
Miss Willina was on her feet in a moment. "Take him upstairs, Rick, and put him to bed--between the blankets. I'll come directly with gruel and mustard. And, Rick! give him a good scrub--all over--with the roughest--bath towel--you can find."
The last directions were called up the stairs as she went into the hall to see Will Lockhart put on his mackintosh properly.
"Good-bye, Miss Macdonald. I'm not in the least envious of the professor's immediate future," he said with smiling eyes, but with vague regrets still at his heart. "I'm glad, though, he was at the other side of the stream to-night. I liked the shadows."
"And the reality?" she asked quickly.
He stooped and kissed the pretty little hand browned by sun and wind. "It is like the breath of your sea. The memory of it will help to blow away the cobwebs until I come back--in the summer."
"The summer is over."
"Not St. Martin's, and one often has a spell of fine weather late in the year when the earlier portions have been stormy."
She shook her head.