“Guess.”
How could he guess? As far as he knew neither she nor he had made an acquaintance in the neighborhood. He shook his head, and she replied:—
“The butcher.”
“You’re a queer girl,” he said, when they had laughed.
“Why?”
“You let these common people take to you so.”
She smiled, with a faint air of concern.
“You don’t dislike it, do you?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” he said, indifferently, and spoke of other things.
And thus they sat, like so many thousands and thousands of young pairs in this wide, free America, offering the least possible interest to the great human army round about them, but sharing, or believing they shared, in the fruitful possibilities of this land of limitless bounty, fondling their hopes and recounting the petty minutiæ of their daily experiences. Their converse was mainly in the form of questions from Mary and answers from John.