"All roses and lilies!" laughed Wally. "That's how I like life!"
They went along hillsides and looked down into the beautiful valleys; they wound around by the sides of rivers and through deep woods; they went like the wind; they loafed; they explored country lanes and lost their way, stopped at a farm-house and found it again, shouted with delight when a squirrel tried to race them along the top of a fence, gasped together when they nearly ran over a turkey, chatted, laughed, sang (though this was a solo, for Mary couldn't sing, though she tried now and then under her breath), and with every mile they rode they seemed to pass invisible milestones along the road which leads from friendship to love.
It came to a crisis two weeks later, on an afternoon in June.
Mary was in the garden picking a bouquet for the table, and Wally went to help her. She gave him a smile that made his heart do a trick, and when he bent over to help her break a piece of mignonette, his hand touched hers….
"Mary…." he whispered.
"Yes?"
"Do you love me a little bit now?"
"I wonder…." said she, and they both bent over to pick another piece of mignonette. Away down deep in Mary, a voice whispered, "Somebody's watching." She looked toward the house and caught sight of Helen who was sitting sideways on the veranda rail and missing never a move.
Wally followed Mary's glance.
"She'll be down here in a minute," he frowned to himself. At the bottom of the lawn, overlooking the valley, was a summer house of rustic cedar, nearly covered with honeysuckle.