"We are not thinking of any such change."
"Well, so far that is good news. But I am still curious. Mr. Schmidt did once say the autumn has no answers. I think thou art like it." She rose as she spoke.
"Ah, but the spring may make reply in its time—in its time. Let me carry thy basket, Miss Margaret." She gave it to him with the woman's liking to be needlessly helped.
"I am very gay with red and gold," she cried, and shook the leaves from her hair and gown. "It is worse than the brocade and the sea-green petticoat my wicked cousins put on me." She could laugh at it now.
"But what would Friends say to the way the fine milliner, Nature, has decked thee, Mademoiselle? They would forgive thee, I think. Mr. Schmidt says the red and gold lie thick on the unnamed graves at Fourth and Mulberry streets, and no Quaker doth protest with a broom."
"He speaks in a strange way sometimes. I often wonder where he learned it."
"Why dost thou not ask him?"
"I should not dare. He might not like it."
"But thou art, it seems, more free to question some other people."
"Oh, but that is different; and, Monsieur," she said demurely, "thou must not say thou and thee to me. Thy mother says it is not proper."