"If I may walk home with you I will tell you; otherwise you must wait."
"You are very dictatorial," she replied, "but when a woman's curiosity is aroused, she is easily managed. If father will drive home alone, I consent to your terms. Father," she continued, turning around and interrupting a conversation which Judge Moreland was holding with an elder, "here is Harold Wainwright."
"Glad to see you, Harold," said the Judge, taking Wainwright's hand and giving it the hearty shake of unaffected cordiality. "Glad to see the son of the best friend I ever had. You must bring your grip up to the house. What brought you to Fairville?"
Harold was about to reply to these numerous and disconnected remarks, but he was interrupted by Florence. "Harold brings news I must hear; he won't tell me unless I promise to let him walk home with me. Do you mind, father?"
"Certainly not. I'll take Elder Jones home—if I can persuade him to ride on Sunday," the Judge added in a whisper.
"Very well, then. Good-by, father," said Florence, moving toward the door.
"Good-by, children. It's a hot day, so don't hurry. If you want to stop under the willows to rest, I sha'n't mind, and I'll wait lunch for you. Don't forget to move up to the house, Harold."
"Thank you, Judge," said Harold, "but as I leave in the morning, I don't believe I had better bother you."
"Nonsense, my boy," called the Judge. "I'll send down for your traps this afternoon."
When Florence and Harold reached the street, the congregation had mostly dispersed. Instead of following the villagers along under the shady elms into the heart of the village, they turned to the left, and tramped in the hot sun toward the shore of the little lake which lay at the end of the town. Judge Moreland's place was on the opposite bank, and although the grey tower on the north wing of the house, rising above the surrounding oak trees, seemed quite near, they were obliged to follow the road for a mile and a half along the lake shore. About half way was a clump of willow trees growing by the water, under whose shade they had often stopped to rest. Florence and Harold both loved this little lake, sunk like a gem amid the rough setting of the mountain crags, and they both felt, instinctively, that they did not care to talk much until they reached their old haunt under the willows. Even Florence forgot her curiosity, and as she walked beside Harold over the road they had so often tramped together, she seemed to forget that he had been away, and that at their last meeting in distant Chicago so much that was unpleasant had occurred. Here in the New Hampshire mountains all seemed so different; she felt freed from the tainted atmosphere of the city which had made her restless and uncertain in mind. Florence had not forgotten her last words with Harold in Chicago; indeed she had thought of them over and over again, during the long months that had passed since that interview; the unpleasant episode at the Renaissance Club was also seldom absent from her mind; but to-day it all seemed to have faded quietly from her heart. Harold had come into church so silently, and it seemed so natural to be walking by his side, that she was carried back to the years before she went to Europe, when, still a child, she used to romp and play with him over these same New Hampshire hills.