"I think I'm honest when I say I didn't think about meeting people at all. I wanted to get my work done as soon as possible and get away."
"I see. You were just camping in the wilderness," she laughed.
"Please don't."
"I know, Teddy boy, it's mean to tease you, but you do tease so easily. You don't suppose I would have asked you to go riding with me today, if I had not believed you were—well—nice, do you?"
And again she cantered away.
I let Satan take his time catching up. Helen's last words made me so happy I wanted to think it over. We were by now a long way ahead of the others; they were not even in sight. Moreover, it began to be a question with Satan and me how much longer we could hold the pace. Helen's instinct gave both Satan and me a respite. We found her resting by an oak overhanging the road.
"We must wait for the crowd to catch up with us," she waved to me. I rolled painfully off Satan's back, unloosed the girths, and allowed him to crop the roadside grass.
"Tie him to the fence," Helen suggested. Satan was promptly made fast to one of those picturesque barriers called locally a "snake-rail fence," a conglomeration of heavy split timbers piled one upon the other in alternate layers, each section forming nearly a right angle with the adjacent one. Tawny golden-rod and purple asters stuck their tops through the fence rails, and many kinds of creeping vines, some already scarlet and yellow, helped bind the angles together. We stretched out on a little grassy bank facing the far distant lake, which lay about a mile away and a hundred feet or so below us. The flat vineyard-covered country sloped downward, away from us, to the lake shore.
"A pleasant open country;" I thought, as I relaxed my aching muscles.
"Wait until you see us after the first real frosts—when all the maples have turned," said Helen. It seemed natural and matter-of-course for her to read my thoughts.