"Len, will you go for a day in the woods with me?"
Ellen Burns looked up from the old mahogany secretary which had been hers in the southern-home days. She was busily writing letters, but the request, from her busy husband, was so unusual that it arrested her attention. Her glance travelled from his face to the window and back again.
"I know it's pretty frosty," he acknowledged, "but the sun is bright, and I'll build you a windbreak that'll keep you snug. I'm aching for a day off—with you."
"Artful man! You know I can't resist when you put it that way, though I ought not to leave this desk for two hours. Give me half an hour, and tell me what you want for lunch."
"Cynthia and I'll take care of that. She's putting up the stuff now, subject to your approval."
He was off to the kitchen, and Ellen finished the note she had begun, put away the writing materials and letters, and ran up to her room. By the end of the stipulated half hour she was down again, trimly clad in a suit of brown tweeds, with a big coat for extra warmth and a close hat and veil for breeze resistance.
"That's my girl! You never look prettier to my eyes than when you are dressed like this. It's the real comrade look you have then, and I feel as if we were shoulder to shoulder, ready for anything that might come."
"Just as if it weren't always that," she said in merry reproach as she took her place beside him and the car rolled off.
"It's always great fun to go off with you unexpectedly like this," she went on presently. "It seems so long since we've done it. It's been such a busy year. Is everybody getting well to-day, that you can manage a whole day?"
"All but one, and he doesn't need me just now. I could keep busy, of course, but I got a sudden hankering for a day all alone with you in the woods; and after that idea once struck me I'd have made way for it anyhow, short of actually running away from duty."