Then he began to “suppose.”  This, as every woman knows, is dangerous business.

“It was beautiful,” said he.  “I can’t tell you about it.  The words don’t seem to fit some way.  I wish you could see it for yourself.  I know you’d enjoy it.  I always wanted some one with me to enjoy it too.  Suppose some way we were placed so we could watch the year go by in those deep windows.  First there is the spring and the birds and the flowers, all of which I’ve been talking about.  Then there is the summer, when the shades are drawn, when the shadows of the roses wave slowly across the curtains, when the air outside quivers with heat, and the air inside tastes like a draught of cool water.  All the bird songs are stilled except that one little fellow still warbles, swaying in the breeze on the tiptop of the ‘big tree,’ his notes sliding down the long sunbeams like beads on a golden thread.  Then we would read together, in the half-darkened ‘parlour,’ something not very deep, but beautiful, like Hawthorne’s stories; or we would together seek for these perfect lines of poetry which haunt the memory.  In the evening we would go out to hear the crickets and the tree toads, to see the night breeze toss the leaves across the calm face of the moon, to be silenced in spirit by the peace of the stars.  Then the autumn would come.  We would taste the ‘Concords’ and the little red grapes and the big red grapes.  We would take our choice of the yellow sweetings, the hard white snow apples, or the little red-cheeked fellows from the west tree.  And then, of course, there are the russets!  Then there are the pears, and all the hickory nuts which rattle down on us every time the wind blows.  The leaves are everywhere.  We would rake them up into big piles, and jump into them, and ‘swish’ about in them.  How bracing the air is!  How silvery the sun!  How red your cheeks would get!  And think of the bonfires!”

“And in winter?” murmured the girl.  Her eyes were shining.

“In the winter the wind would howl through the ‘big tree,’ and everything would be bleak and cold out doors.  We would be inside, of course, and we would sit on the fur rug in front of the fireplace, while the evening passed by, watching the ‘geese in the chimney’ flying slowly away.”

“‘Suppose’ some more,” she begged dreamily.  “I love it.  It rests me.”

She clasped her hands back of her head and closed her eyes.

The young man looked quietly about him.

“This is a wild and beautiful country,” said he, “but it lacks something.  I think it is the soul.  The little wood lots of the East have so much of it.”  He paused in surprise at his own thoughts.  His only experiences in the woods East had been when out picnicking, or berrying, and he had never noticed these things.  “I don’t know as I ever thought of it there,” he went on slowly, as though trying to be honest with her, “but here it comes to me somehow or another.”  A little fly-catcher shot up from the frond below, poised a moment, and dropped back with closed wings.