“Do you really enjoy it?” said Harry. “It must seem so different from the Champs Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne.”
His companion was silent a moment, and ’twas not until he repeated that the pine woods and stony fields of New Hampshire must appear very rugged and unpleasant to her that she said:
“Well, but here, sir, I do for once in my life feel that I am free. Why, at the fashionable pensionnat where mother put me I was not allowed to walk out alone even with my cousin Arthur.”
“Oh! you can’t imagine how I long to see Paris,” continued Harry.
“Well, despite what I have just said,” answered Kitty, “it is a most fascinating city—the queen of cities; and there is a large colony of Americans there, who have made up their minds to die in Paris, and who look upon their countrymen here as semi-barbarians.”
In a few minutes they reached the brook and Harry cast in his fly. But no fish rose; and presently he gave another throw. This time it was not skilfully done, or rather it was most skilfully done, for the fly, as it went circling round his head, got caught in Kitty’s truant curl, who laughed and said: “You have hooked a big trout now, Mr. Fletcher.”
“Well, I came purposely to catch a mess for you,” returned Harry. “But may I crave leave to keep this one dear fish all for myself?”
“What do you mean?” laughed Kitty, as he tried to disentangle the fly.
“I mean—” here his fingers stopped working and his voice trembled. “I mean—” Kitty, who understood him well enough, in another moment gave the happy response, and Harry was so overjoyed that he wound up his line and did not fish any more.
But they did not return immediately to the village; they felt drawn nearer to each other in the lonely woods, with only the trees and the brook to watch them; and so on and on they wandered, until by and by they emerged from the forest and saw before them an old farmhouse with moss-covered roof, on which the morning sun was shining, and round about the homestead the stream made well-nigh a circle—a bright, silvery circle, murmuring sweet music to those who dwelt there. The lovers paused a moment and gazed upon the scene without speaking. Then presently Kitty said: “I could live in such a spot all my life.”