Phil carried a bundle of mail to her father to which he addressed himself after the supper they cooked for themselves in the camp in their old fashion. Amzi scorned their invitation to join them, as he frankly confessed his inability to find joy in sitting on a boulder and drinking coffee out of a tin cup. He preferred the comforts of his own farmhouse and Fred's society.
Phil had promised to visit him later, and finding that her father became engrossed immediately in an engineer's report on the Illinois traction property, she stole away.
She took the familiar ascent slowly, pausing now and then to listen to the murmur and rush of the waters beneath. From the top of the cliff she called down to assure her father of her safety. The dry stubble of the newly cut wheat was rough underfoot as she set off for Amzi's. There was much sowing and reaping in the world, she philosophized, and far too much chaff in the garnered grain! Life, that might be so simple if every one would only be a little bit reasonable, unfolded itself before her in dim, bewildering vistas.
Fred had started to meet her, and she saw his stalwart figure against the fading west.
"Mr. Montgomery is getting nervous about you; he said for you to hurry! The fact is that I bored him and he needs you to cheer him up."
"Which is fishing," Phil replied. "I had the dishes to wash. There's a lot to do in a camp."
"You'd better not mention the dishwashing; that's what made him cross."
"Cross! Dear old Amy cross!" laughed Phil. "Why, Fred, he doesn't know how to spell the word!"
They followed a lane beside a cornfield, talking spiritedly. Fred paused, lifted his head and filled his lungs with the fresh cool air. It was with a sense of elation that he traversed these fields of his own tilling and sowing and reaping. There was something in his bronzed face that had not been there when Phil first knew him. He carried his shoulders straighter and was less timid; he expressed himself with more confidence and was beyond question on very good terms with the world. At every meeting they had somehow seemed to make progress; they really got on famously together now that he was no longer shy in her company and had caught the spirit of her humor.
She had wondered frequently whether she was in love with him. Her speculations had been purely subjective; she had not been concerned in the least with his attitude toward her. It had occurred to her in other moods that he would be an interesting character in a book and she had even jotted down notes which would have astonished him greatly if he had been vouchsafed a glance at those amazing memoranda. Viewed objectively he was an attractive protagonist for a story dealing with the return to the soil of a young man, who, trying city life without success, sought refuge in the fields of his ancestors. The heroine must be a haughty city girl whose scorn should yield slowly to admiration and love. The last chapter of the tale should be called "The Harvest." She thought well of the idea, and meant to sketch an outline of it as soon as she finished a short story about the young gentleman who presided over the soda-fountain at Struby's, the simple chronicle of whose love affair with the cashier at Bernstein's she was just now transcribing for "Journey's End."