“I should be unworthy the name you’ve given me if I forgot,” said Hadyn.
“It wouldn’t make one bit of difference whether I had given you that name or not, you couldn’t be different.”
“Thank you. But where are you going now?”
“Nowhere in particular. Amy is away and Connie up to her eyes in the month’s accounts. So I’m adrift.”
“How would you like to come for a walk in the woods with me? I am not going back to the office this afternoon, for the fever is on me. The call of the woods gets into my blood sometimes, and then I’ve got to tramp. Only trouble is, I can’t always get a tramping companion. Will you come?”
“I’d love to, but I must let mother know, she might worry.”
“She won’t, because she knows I came to ask you to go with me if I could find you.”
They struck into a side road, which presently became a mere wood path leading up the mountain, and from which a little higher up an exquisite picture of the river and opposite mountains could be seen. Hadyn, pausing at a broad, flat rock, said:
“Let’s sit down and enjoy all this. Come, sit beside me, little sister.”
Jean dropped down upon the lichen-covered rock, warm and dry in the afternoon sunshine which fell upon it, and said: