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The next day, there being some dozens of people almost in earshot, Mr. Blagdon had an opportunity to speak to little Miss Blythe. Under the circumstances, the last thing she expected was a declaration; they were in full view of everybody; anybody might stroll up and interrupt. So what Mr. Blagdon had to say came to her with something the effect of sudden thunder from a clear sky.

“Phyllis,” said he, “you have been looking about you since you were seventeen. Will I do?”

“Oh, Bob!” she protested.

“I have tried to do,” said he, not without a fine ring of manliness. “Have I made good?”

She smiled bravely and looked as nonchalant as possible; but her heart was beating heavily.

“I’ve liked being good friends–so much,” she said. “Don’t spoil it.”

“I tell her,” said he, “that in all the world there is only the one girl–only the one. And she says–Don’t spoil it.'”

“Bob—-“

“I will make you happy,” he said…. “Has it never entered your dear head that some time you must give me an answer?”

She nodded her dear head, for she was very honest.

“I suppose so,” she said.

“Well,” said he.

“In my mind,” she said, “I have never been able to give you the same answer twice….”

“A decision is expected from us,” said he. “People are growing tired of our long backing and filling.”

“People! Do they matter?”

“They matter a great deal. And you know it.”

“Yes. I suppose they do. Let me off for now, Bob. People are looking at us….”

“I want an answer.”

But she would not be coerced.

“You shall have one, but not now. I’m not sure what it will be.”

“If you can’t be sure now, can you ever be sure?”

“Yes. Give me two weeks. I shall think about nothing else.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Two weeks…. That will be full moon…. I shall ask all Aiken to a picnic in the woods, weather permitting … and–and if your answer is to be my happiness, why, you shall come up to me, and say, ‘Bob–drive me home, will you?'”

“And if it’s the other answer, Bob?”

He smiled in his usual bantering way.

“If it’s the other, Phyllis–why–you–you can walk home.”

She laughed joyously, and he laughed, just as if nothing but what was light and amusing was in question between them.

Along the Whiskey Road nearly the whole floating population of Aiken moved on horseback or on wheels. Every fourth or fifth runabout carried a lantern; but the presence in the long, wide-gapped procession of other vehicles or equestrians was denoted only by the sounds of voices. Half a dozen family squabbles, half a dozen flirtations (which would result in family squabbles), and half a dozen genuine romances were moving through the sweet-smelling dark to Mr. Bob Blagdon’s picnic in Red Oak Hollow. Only three of the guests knew where Red Oak Hollow was, and two of these were sure that they could only find it by daylight; but the third, a noted hunter and pigeon shot, rode at the head of the procession, and pretended (he was forty-five with the heart of a child) that he was Buffalo Bill leading a lost wagon-train to water. And though nobody could see him for the darkness, he played his part with minute attention to detail, listening, pulling up short, scowling to right and left, wetting a finger and holding it up to see from which direction the air was moving. He was so intent upon bringing his convoy safely through a hostile country that the sounds of laughter or of people in one runabout calling gayly to people in another were a genuine annoyance to him.

Mr. Bob Blagdon had preceded his guests by half an hour, and was already at the scene of the picnic. Fate, or perhaps the weather bureau at Washington, had favored him with just the conditions he would have wished for. The night was hot without heaviness; in the forenoon of that day there had been a shower, just wet enough to keep the surfaces of roads from rising in dust. It was now clear and bestarred, and perhaps a shade less dark than when he had started. Furthermore, it was so still that candles burned without flickering. He surveyed his preparations with satisfaction. And because he was fastidious in entertainment this meant a great deal.