The path that rose through the wood from St. Agatha's declined again from the seat, and came out somewhere below, where there was a spring sacred to the school-girls, and where, I dare say, they still indulge in the incantations of their species. I amused myself picking out the pier lights as far as I had learned them, following one of the lake steamers on its zigzag course from Port Annandale to the village. Around me the great elms and maples still dripped. Eleven chimed from the chapel clock, the strokes stealing up to me dreamily. A moment later I heard a step in the path behind me, light, quick, and eager, and I bent down low on the bench, so that its back shielded me from view, and waited. I heard the sharp swish of bent twigs in the shrubbery as they snapped back into place in the narrow trail, and then the voice of some one humming softly. The steps drew closer to the bench, and some one passed behind me. I was quite sure that it was a woman--from the lightness of the step, the feminine quality in the voice that continued to hum a little song, and at the last moment the soft rustle of skirts. I rose and spoke her name before my eyes were sure of her.
She did not cry out, though she stepped back quickly from the bench.
"It most certainly is!" I laughed. "We seem to have similar tastes, Miss Holbrook."
"An interest in geography, shall we call it?" she chaffed gaily.
"Or astronomy! We will assume that we are both looking for the Little Dipper."
"Good!" she returned on my own note. "Between the affairs of the Holbrooks and your evening Dipper hunt you are a busy man, Mr. Donovan."
"I am not half so busy as you are, Miss Holbrook! It must tax you severely to maintain both sides of the barricade at the same time," I ventured boldly.
"That does require some ingenuity," she replied musingly, "but I am a very flexible character."
"But what will bend will break--you may carry the game too far."
"Not a bit of it; but I should like to make this stipulation with you: that as you and I seem to be pitted against each other in this little contest, we shall fight it all out behind Miss Pat's back. I prefer that she shouldn't know what a--" and I hesitated.
"Oh, give me a name, won't you?" she pleaded mockingly.