“Do—do you wish—that—now?” she faltered.
He picked up the paddle; she caught his hand, trembling.
“No, no!”—she whispered, with bent head—“I cannot; don’t take me so—so quickly. Truly we must be mad to think of it.”
He held the paddle poised; after a while her hand slid from the blade and she looked up into his eyes. The canoe moved on.
“Oh, we are quite mad,” she said, unsteadily.
“I am glad we are,” he said.
The mellow dip! dip! of the paddle woke the drowsing red-winged blackbirds from the reeds; the gray snipe wheeled out across the marsh in flickering flight.
The aged parson of Foxville, intent on his bobbing cork, looked up in mild surprise to see a canoe, heavily hung with water-lilies, glide into his pool and swing shoreward.
The parson of Foxville was a very old man—almost too old to fish for trout.
Crawford led him a pace aside, leaving Miss Castle, somewhat frightened, knee-deep in the purple iris.