“That’s my girl!  You never look prettier to my eyes than when you are dressed like this.  It’s the real comrade look you have then, and I feel as if we were shoulder to shoulder, ready for anything that might come.”

“Just as if it weren’t always that,” she said in merry reproach as she took her place beside him and the car rolled off.

“It’s always great fun to go off with you unexpectedly like this,” she went on presently.  “It seems so long since we’ve done it.  It’s been such a busy year.  Is everybody getting well to-day, that you can manage a whole day?”

“All but one, and he doesn’t need me just now.  I could keep busy, of course, but I got a sudden hankering for a day all alone with you in the woods; and after that idea once struck me I’d have made way for it anyhow, short of actually running away from duty.”

“You need it, I know.  We’ll just leave all care behind and remember nothing except how happy we are to be together.  That never grows old, does it, Red?”

“Never!” He spoke almost with solemnity, and gave her a long look as he said it, which she met with one to match it.  “You dear!” he murmured.  “Len, do you know I never loved you so well as I do to-day?”

“I wonder why?” She was smiling, and her colour, always duskily soft in her cheek, grew a shade warmer.  “Is it the brown tweeds?”

“It’s the brown tweeds, and the midnight-dark hair, and the beautiful black eyes, and—­the lovely soul of my wife.”

“Why, Red, dear—­and all this so early in the morning?  How will you end if you begin like this?”

“I don’t know—­or care.”  Something strange looked out of his eyes for a minute.  “I know what I want to say now and I’m saying it.  So much of the time I’m too busy to make love to my wife, I’m going to do it to-day—­all day.  I warn you now, so you can sidetrack me if you get tired of it.”

“I’m very likely to,” she said with a gay tenderness.  “To have you make love to me without the chance of a telephone call to break in will be a wonderful treat.”

“It sure will to me.”

It was a significant beginning to a strange day.  They drove for twenty miles, to find a certain place upon a bluff overlooking a small lake of unusual beauty, far out of the way of the ordinary motor traveller.  They climbed a steep hill, coming out of the wooded hillside into the full sunlight of the late October day, where spread an extended view of the countryside, brilliant with autumn foliage.  The air was crisp and invigorating, and a decided breeze was stirring upon this lofty point, so that the windbreak which Burns began at once to build was a necessary protection if they were to remain long.

An hour of hard work, at which Ellen helped as much as she was allowed, established a snug camp, its back against a great bowlder, its windward side sheltered by a thick barrier of hemlocks cleverly placed, a brisk bonfire burning in an angle where an improvised chimney carried off its smoke and left the corner clear and warm.