"Why, Gifford!" she said.
"Why, Lois!" he exclaimed with her, and then they looked at each other.
The young man threw away his cigarette, and, springing from his horse, slipped the reins over his arm, and walked beside her.
"Are you going away?" Lois asked. "But it is so early!"
She had her little basket in her hand, and she was holding her blue print gown up over a white petticoat, to keep it from the wet grass. Her broad hat was on the back of her head, and the wind had blown the curls around her face into a sunny tangle, and made her cheeks as fresh as a wild rose.
"You are the early one, it seems to me," he answered, smiling.
"I've come to get mushrooms for father," she explained. "It is best to get them early, while the dew is on them. There are a good many around that little old ruin further up the road, you know."
"Yes, I know," he said. (He felt himself suddenly in a tumult of uncertainty. "It would be no harm just to say a word," he thought. "Why shouldn't she know—no matter if she can never care herself—that I care? It would not trouble her. No, I am a fool to think of it,—I won't.") "But it is so early for you to be out alone," he said. "Do you take care of her, Max?"
"Max is a most constant friend," Lois replied; "he never leaves me." Then she blushed, lest Gifford should think that she had thought he was not constant.
But Gifford's thoughts were never so complicated. With him, it was either, "She loves me," or, "She does not;" he never tormented himself, after the fashion of women, by wondering what this look meant, or that inflection, and fearing that the innermost recesses of his mind might be guessed from a calm and indifferent face.