“Wilbur, dear,” he read, “I am still holding you.  Are you me?  What do you guess?  Do you guess we were a couple of homesick ninnies, tired and weak and too combustible?  Or do you guess it meant something about us finding each other out all in one second, like a flash of something?  Do you guess we were frazzled up to the limit and not braced to hold back or anything, the way civilized people do?  I mean, will we be the same back home?  If we will be, how funny!  We shall have to find out, shan’t we?  But let’s be sporty, and give the thing a chance to be true if it can.  That’s fair enough, isn’t it?  What I mean, let’s not shatter its morale by some poky chance meeting with a lot of people round, whom it is none of their business what you and I do or don’t do.  That would be fierce, would it not?  So much might depend.

“Anyway, here’s what:  The first night I am home—­your intelligence department must find out the day, because I’m not going to write to you again if I never see you, I feel so unmaidenly—­I shall be at our stile leading out to West Hill.  You remember it—­above the place where those splendid gypsies camped when we were such a funny little boy and girl.  The first night as soon as I can sneak out from my proud family.  You come there.  We’ll know!”

* * * * *

“Funny, funny, funny—­the whole game!” he said.

He lost himself in a lazy wonder if it could be true.  He didn’t know.  Once she had persisted terribly in his eyes; now she had faded.  Her figure before the broken church was blurred.

Sharon Whipple found him the next afternoon teaching two new men the use and abuse of a tractor, and plainly bored by his task.  Sharon seized the moment to talk pungently about the good old times when a farm hand didn’t have to know how to disable a tractor, or anything much, and would work fourteen hours a day for thirty dollars a month and his keep.  He named the wage of the two pupils in a tone of disgruntled awe that piqued them pleasantly but did not otherwise impress.  When they had gone their expensive ways he turned to Wilbur.

“Did you get over to that dry-fork place to-day?”

“No; too busy here with these highbinders.”

He spoke wearily, above a ripening suspicion that he would not much longer be annoyed in this manner.  A new letter had that morning come from the intending adventurer into South America.

“I’ll bet you’ve had a time with this new help,” said Sharon.

“I’ve put three men at work over on that clearing, though.”

“I’ll get over there myself with you to-morrow; no, not tomorrow—­next day after.  That girl of ours gets in to-morrow noon.  Have to be there, of course.”

“Of course.”

“She trotted a smart mile over there.  Everybody says so.  Family tickled to death about her.  Me, too, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Rattlepate, though.”