“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
But the canoe was already in the narrow stream, and he was laughing recklessly, setting-pole poised to swing round the short turns.
“If we turned back now,” she said, “it would be sunset before we reached the club.”
“What do we care?” he laughed. “Look!”
Without warning, a yellow glory broke through the trees, and the canoe shot out into a vast, flat country, drenched with the rays of the sinking sun.
Blue woods belted the distance; all in front of them was deep, moist meadow-land, carpeted with thickets of wild iris, through which the stream wound in pools of gold.
The beauty of it held her speechless; the spell was upon him, too, and he sat motionless, the water dripping from his steel-tipped setting-pole in drops of fire.
There was a figure moving in the distant meadow; the sun glimmered on something that might have been a long reed quivering.
“An old friend fishing yonder,” he said, quietly; “I knew he would be there.” He touched her and pointed to the distant figure. “That is the parson of Foxville,” he said. “We will need him before we go to London.”
She looked across the purple fields of iris. Suddenly his meaning flashed out like a sunbeam.