"There's a man out this way I must look up—a kind of farmer, drover, and jockey rolled in one. He influences a bunch of votes. It's very pleasant to find you riding the same way. I'm glad we met—that is—if you—"
Her smile stopped his limping improvisation in mid-career.
"You needn't invent anything more," she said. "You're not good at it."
"There really is such a man," he defended, with a contented laugh; "but he can wait. I'd like to be quit of the political grind for a while. May I rest?"
"Yes; you may come," Ruth decided.
His appeal struck a womanly chord.
October was spendthrift of its pigments. Every isolated copse was a mimic forest fire, each bivouacked corn-field a russet foil, the air a heady wine. Shelby thrilled with dumb pastorals and a vague longing to do and speak in keeping with the spirit of the scene. A tuft of oxeye daisies in the shelter of a ruinous worm fence attracted him, and he reined the cob from the highway to fetch them. To his bewilderment Ruth's face shadowed at the gift.
"Poor things—what made you?" she lamented. "I've watched them there for a fortnight. What clumsy florist could have grouped them with the tall grasses so exquisitely, and set the little red vine clambering over all in the fence corner, so satiny and lichen-gray?"
Shelby was mystified.
"I thought that they would look smart in your belt—that all women wanted to pick flowers when they saw them—" he stammered. "I'm afraid I know little of women's ways."