"We are not going to let you go," he said with determination. "We shall keep you to tend our garden, and sit by our hearth, and ride with us on mornings like this." Lightly said, but with meaning back of it.
Hildegarde, missing the meaning, saw only the lightness. "It has been a wonderful ride," she told him.
"We'll have more of them. There's an old inn on the Point. Some morning we'll have breakfast there—just you and I. It's great fun—fish and cornbread and a rasher of bacon."
As he told more about the famous old hostelry, Hildegarde's thoughts were swept away from Crispin. Here was adventure close at hand. And it was pleasantly stimulating to see the admiration in Meriweather's eyes. There had been, too, her mirror before that to show a charming reflection in the new riding clothes—rough, gray homespun, smart waistcoat, shining boots, and stiff little hat.
They mounted their horses.
"Good-by," Hildegarde called back to the old bronze turtle. "We shall come again tomorrow."
She came tomorrow, and for many morrows, and always beside her was the tall figure of the thin, dark man. She called him "Merry" now, and they were great friends.
"I am riding every morning with Mr. Meriweather," she wrote to Crispin. "We had breakfast yesterday at a place on the Point which is famous all through the state. It was snowing a little, just a feather or two drifting down, and everything so still and cold—and then the roaring fire as we came in, and the gay
