"Right now. I'll be home early. Don't fret about me, Mother."
They went down the walk together, Doak and Martha, and he had forgotten June and the Department and all the girls who would be out, looking, tonight in Washington.
She walked easily at his side, poised and quiet.
He said, "Do you work in town?"
She nodded. "For an attorney. I was going to law school myself until Dad died."
"Oh," he said.
He wondered at his lack of words, and the strange sense of—almost of inferiority glimmering in him. She hadn't said anything or done anything to place him at a disadvantage but he knew this was no lass for the casual pitch.
They came to the crest of the hill and saw the dying sun low in the west. The quiet was almost absolute. About a hundred yards on the other side of the ridge was a road leading off to the south. On the right side of this road was the big house with the high stone fence.
Doak said quietly, "There's a few sentences that have been bothering me all day. I wonder if you'd recognize them. They're, 'Studious, let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead.' One of the Scotch poets probably."
"Thomson," she said, "from his Seasons." She looked straight ahead.