"I didn't do it for you: I did it for fun," she replied shortly; and yet deep down in her heart she did not dislike his words or the intense manner in which he spoke them. Her dallyings with boys of her own age, with only now and then a discreet flirtation with one of the college seniors, comprised her personal experiences of romance.
"You are beautiful—wonderful! Yours is the bravest soul in the world. I loved you the day I first saw you in your father's office. Phil—"
For a moment his hand lay upon hers that was trembling still from its grip of the tree.
"We must climb to the top; the joke will be spoiled if we let them help us," she cried, springing to her feet. "Come! The way will be easier along the old path."
Across the vale some one hallooed to them. Her white sweater was clearly printed against the cliff and a man on the edge of the farther side stood with the light of the declining sun playing round him. The ravine narrowed here and the distance across was not more than a hundred yards.
Phil fluttered her handkerchief.
"It's Fred!" she said. "See! There by the big sycamore."
Fred waved his cap, then dropped his arm to his side and stood, a sentinel-like figure, at the edge of his acres, etched in heroic outline against the winter sky. His trousers were thrust into his boots; the collar of the mackinaw coat he wore at his work was turned up about his throat. He leaned upon an axe with which he had been cutting the coarser brush in the fence corners. The wind ruffled his hair as he stood thus, in the fading light. He had been busy all afternoon and quite unmindful of his aunt's party, to which, for reasons sufficient to that lady, he had not been bidden.
A sense of his rugged simplicity and manliness seemed to be borne to Phil across the ravine. Something in Fred Holton touched her with a kind of pathos—there was in him something of her father's patience, and something of his capacity for suffering. As she looked he swung the axe upon his shoulders and struck off homeward across the fields.
Charles sprang ahead of her and began the remainder of the ascent. It was he who was now impatient.