"That you, Amanda?" came over the wire.
"Yes."
"Got a houseful of company? It seemed like that when we drove past.
Overflow meeting on the porch!"
"Oh, yes, as usual."
"What I wanted to know is--are there any young people among the
visitors, that makes it a matter of courtesy for you to stay at home
all afternoon?"
"No, they are all older people to-day, and a few little children."
"Good! Then how would you like to have a little picnic, just we two? I
want to get away from Victrola music and children's questions and four
walls, and I thought you might have a similar longing."
"Mental telepathy, Martin! That's just what I was thinking as I was out
in the garden."
"Then I'll call for you and we'll go up past the sandpit to that
hilltop where the breeze blows even on a day like this."
When Martin came for her she was ready, a lunch tucked under one arm,
two old pillows in the other. She had given the red hair a few pats,
added several hairpins, slipped off her white dress and buttoned up a
pale green chambray one with cool white collar and cuffs. She stood
ready, attractive, as Martin entered the lawn.
"Say!" he whistled. "You did that in short order! I thought it took
girls hours to dress."
"Then you're like Solomon; you can't understand the ways of women!" She
laughed as she handed him the lunch-box.
Her calm efficiency puzzled him. Lately he was discovering so many
undreamed of qualities in this lively friend of his childhood. He was
beginning to feel some of the wonder those people must have felt whose
children played with pebbles that were one day discovered to be
priceless uncut diamonds. Until that day she had found him prostrate in
her moccasin woods he had thought of her as just Amanda Reist, a nice,
jolly girl with a quick temper if you tried her too hard and a quick
tongue to express it, but a good comrade and a pleasant companion if
you treated her fairly.
Then his attitude had undergone a change. After that day of his great
unhappiness he thought of her as a woman, staunch, courageous, yet
gentle and feminine, one who had faith in her old friend, who could
comfort a man when he was downcast and help him raise his head again. A
wonderful woman she was! One who loved pretty clothes and things modern
and yet appreciated the charm of the old-fashioned, and seemed to
dovetail perfectly into the plain grooves of her people and his with
their quaint old dress and houses and manners. A woman, too, who had an
intense love for the great outdoors. Not the shallow, pretentious love
that would call forth gushing rhapsodies about moonlight or sunsets or
the spectacular alone in nature, but a sincere, deep-rooted love that
shone in her eyes as she stooped to see more plainly the tracery of
veins in a fallen leaf and moved her to gentle speech to the birds,
butterflies and woodland creatures as though they could understand and
answer.