She was in her trumpet-vine arbour, the roof of which was already sun-dried. The shaded sides were still dew-wet. She bounded across to him, very exquisite in her light blue frock with broad, fresh white ribbons in her light-brown hair: healthy, docile, joyous, with innocent blue eyes and the complexion of apple blossoms.
"Where are you going?" she asked in a voice which implied that the day would be as pleasant, no matter where he went: nevertheless she had no thought of appearing indifferent to him.
"What are you going into the woods for?" she inquired, with little dancing movements of her feet on the yard grass in irrepressible health and joy and with no especial interest in his reply.
"Could _you_ go?" He very well knew she could not and merely yielded to an impulse to express himself: he was offering to ruin the day for her.
"They wouldn't let me," said Jenny, apparently not disappointed at being thus kept at home.
He sought to make the best of his disappointment.
"Even if you could go, I am afraid you never would be quiet, Jenny."
"I'm afraid I wouldn't," Jenny replied, responsive to every suggestion.
He lingered, tenderly disturbed by her: the roots of the future were growing in him this morning. He was changing, he was changing _her_: there was an outreaching of his nature to draw her into the future alongside him.
Jenny suddenly stopped dancing and came closer to the fence, having all at once become more conscious of Webster, standing there as he had never stood before, looking at her as he had never looked. Her nature was of yielding sweetness, clasping trust. She glanced around the cottage windows: the situation was very exposed. Webster glanced at the cottage windows: the situation did not appear in the least exposed. Her eyes became more round with an idea:
Jenny danced away from the fence, laughing excitedly: "Will it be late?"
Webster climbed the fence of the forest under the foliage of a big tree of some unknown kind and descended waist-deep into the foliage of a weed with a leaf as big as an elephant's ear: it had a beautiful trumpet-shaped white and purple flower. He wished he knew what it was: on the very edge of the forest, at his very first step, he had sunk waist-deep into ignorance. Then he waded through the rank nightshade and stepped out upon the grass of the woods--the green carpet of thick turf, Kentucky bluegrass.