Walking slowly and more slowly, and all unconscious of their lingering steps, John Maxwell and Mary Cary watched in silence the changes in the sky; noted the soft green of trees and grass, the blossoming of old-fashioned flowers in gardens of another day, reached out hands to pull a spray of bridal wreath or yellow jessamine, and as they neared the asylum both stopped, though why they hardly knew themselves.
"Study hour," said Mary Cary, explanatorily. "Poor little things! Of course I am very impractical, and I would never do for the head of anything, because I have such queer ideas, especially about children. But I don't believe they will ever learn anything in a book that would do them as much good as a beautiful sunset. And yet they're shut up in the house on an evening like this studying something about the sun, perhaps, and not allowed to see its glories and wonders, because it sets at an hour that is set apart for something else. Sometimes"—she pulled a bit of bridal wreath to pieces and threw its petals on the ground— "sometimes I wonder if more harm isn't done by too much system than by too little."
"Doubtless it is." John Maxwell smiled, though in his eyes were other thoughts than those which were filling hers. "But there's been a big change in this place since you were here. That wing was a great improvement. Looks now pretty much like a big home instead of a place for herding humans, as it once looked. How I used to hate it!"
"Hate it?" They had resumed their walk and she looked up. "I don't see what you hated it for."
"Don't you?" He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face, and as he put it back in his pocket he looked in her questioning eyes.
"It was because you were in it and I couldn't take you out."
She shook her head. "It was well you couldn't. You wouldn't have known what to do with me, and—"
"I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted mother to send you to the finest school in the country, get you beautiful clothes, and give you everything you wanted until I could marry you. Then I was going to pay her back."
"What a silly boy!" She laughed, but she did not look at him. They had turned the corner and were now at the end of the asylum yard, enclosed by its high wooden fence, and as they started to go down the street which would lead into the road to Tree Hill she laid her hand again on his arm.
"Wait a minute." Her foot was against a certain paling, and with her heel she made a hole in the ground. "Do you remember this?"