Patience looked longingly after the two starting gayly off down the path, their cameras swung over their shoulders, then she looked disgustedly at the aster bed.  It was quite the biggest of the smaller beds.—­She didn’t see what people wanted to plant so many asters for; she had never cared much for asters, she felt she should care even less about them in the future.  Tiresome, stiff affairs!

By the time Tom and Hilary reached the old Cross-Roads’ Meeting-House that morning, after a long roundabout ramble, Hilary, for one, was quite willing to sit down and wait for Pauline and the trap, and eat the great, juicy blackberries Tom gathered for her from the bushes along the road.

It had rained during the night and the air was crisp and fresh, with a hint of the coming fall.  “Summer’s surely on the down grade,” Tom said, throwing himself on the bank beside Hilary.

“So Paul and I were lamenting this morning.  I don’t suppose it matters as much to you folks who are going off to school.”

“Still it means another summer over,” Tom said soberly.  He was rather sorry that it was so—­there could never be another summer quite so jolly and carefree.  “And the breaking up of the club, I suppose?”

“I don’t see why we need call it a break—­just a discontinuance, for a time.”

“And why that, even?  There’ll be a lot of you left, to keep it going.”

“Y-yes, but with three, or perhaps more, out, I reckon we’ll have to postpone the next installment until another summer.”

Tom went off then for more berries, and Hilary sat leaning back against the trunk of the big tree crowning the top of Meeting-House Hill, her eyes rather thoughtful.  From where she sat, she had a full view of both roads for some distance and, just beyond, the little hamlet scattered about the old meeting-house.

Before the gate of one of the houses stood a familiar gig, and presently, as she sat watching, Dr. Brice came down the narrow flower-bordered path, followed by a woman.  At the gate both stopped; the woman was saying something, her anxious, drawn face seeming out of keeping with the cheery freshness of the morning and the flowers nodding their bright heads about her.

As the doctor stood listening, his old shabby medicine case in his hand, with face bent to the troubled one raised to his, and bearing indicating grave sympathy and understanding, Hilary reached for her camera.

“Upon my word!  Isn’t the poor pater exempt?” Tom laughed, coming back.

“I want it for the book Josie and I are making for you to take away with you, ‘Winton Snap-shots.’  We’ll call it ‘The Country Doctor.’”

Tom looked at the gig, moving slowly off down the road now.  He hated to say so, but he wished Hilary would not put that particular snap-shot in.  He had a foreboding that it was going to make him a bit uncomfortable—­later—­when the time for decision came; though, as for that, he had already decided—­beyond thought of change.  He wished that the pater hadn’t set his heart on his coming back here to practice—­and he wished, too, that Hilary hadn’t taken that photo.