Out through the crowded streets into the suburbs, on beyond these to the open country, the car took its way with as much haste as was compatible with necessary caution. Once on the open road, however, and well away, King paid small attention to covering distance. Indeed, when they had reached a certain wooded district, picturesque after the fashion of the semi-mountainous country of that part of the state, he let his car idle after a fashion most unaccustomed with him, who was usually principally concerned with getting from one place to another with the least possible waste of time.
And now he and Anne Linton were talking as they never had had the chance to talk before, and they were exploring each other's minds with the zest of those who have many tastes in common. King was confirming that of which he had been convinced by her letters, that she was thoroughly educated, and that she had read and thought along lines which had intensely interested him ever since he had reached the thinking age. To his delight he found that she could hold her own in an argument with as close reasoning, as logical deduction, as keen interpretation, as any young man he knew. And with it all she showed a certain quality of appreciation of his own side of the question which especially pleased him, because it proved that she possessed that most desirable power, rare among those of her sex as he knew them—the ability to hold herself free from undue bias.
Yet she proved herself a very girl none the less by suddenly crying out at sight of certain tall masses of shell-pink flowers growing by the roadside in a shady nook, and by insisting on getting out to pick them for herself.
"It's so much more fun," she asserted, "to choose one's own than to watch a man picking all the poorest blossoms and leaving the very best."
"Is that what we do?" King asked, his eyes feasting upon the sight of her as she filled her arms with the gay masses, her face eager with her pleasure in them.
"Yes, indeed. Or else you get out a jackknife and hack off great handfuls of them at once, and bring them back all bleeding from your ruthless attack."
"I see. And you gather them delicately, so they don't mind, I suppose. Yet—I was given to understand that 'Susquehanna' died first. I've always wondered what you did to her. I'd banked on her as the huskiest of the lot."
She flashed a quick look at him, compounded of surprise, mirth, and something else whose nature he could not guess. "'Susquehanna' was certainly a wonderful rose," she admitted.
"Yet only next morning she was sadly drooping. I know, because I received a report of her. And I lost my wager."
"You should have known better," she said demurely, her head bent over her armful of flowers, "than to make a wager on the life of a rose sent to a girl who was just coming back to life herself."