"Let us tell each other everything now," I cried, and we seated ourselves in the hammock.
It was a quarter of an hour later and we were still sitting together in the hammock.
"You may think," said she, "that, knowing what I did, it was very queer for me to come out to you this morning, but I could not help it. You were getting dreadfully careless, and were staying so late and doing things which people would have been bound to notice, especially as father is always talking about our enjoying the fresh hours of the morning, that I felt I could not let you go on any longer. And when it came to that fan business I saw plainly that you must either immediately start for Europe or—"
"Or what?" I interrupted.
"Or go to my father and regularly engage yourself as a—"
I do not know whether she was going to say "gardener" or not, but it did not matter. I stopped her.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later, and we were standing together at the edge of the woods. She wanted me to come to the house to take breakfast with them.
"Oh, I could not do that!" I said. "They would be so surprised. I should have so much to explain before I could even begin to state my case."
"Well, then, explain," said she. "You will find father on the front piazza. He is always there before breakfast, and there is plenty of time. After all that has been said here, I cannot go to breakfast and look commonplace while you run away."
"But suppose your father objects?" said I.