They were chums rather than sweethearts. It needed a sense of old times coming to an end and new times beginning to make them realize the full depth and significance of their attachment for each other.

There were four of us once "in a kingdom by the sea," and I shall not forget the awful sense of partings and finality, and calamity, for that matter, furnished by a sudden sight of the first flaming maple of autumn.

"I think your mother's a perfect brick," said Renier. "She makes you feel as if she'd known you all your life, and was kind of grateful to you for living."

"I'm rather crazy about the prince," said Lee. "Of course, I oughtn't to be. But I can't help it, and after all he's been awfully good to mamma. Do you believe in divorce?"

"I never did until I saw your mother. She wouldn't ask for anything that she didn't really deserve."

"But it's funny, isn't it," said Lee, "that so many people get on famously together until they are actually married, and then they begin to fight like cats? I knew a girl who was engaged to a man for five years. You'd think they'd get to know each other pretty well in that time, wouldn't you? But they didn't. They hadn't been married six months before they hated each other."

"And that proves," said Renier, "that long engagements are a mistake."

"Smarty!" exclaimed Lee.

"I suppose your brother'll be getting married right away, won't he? Haven't they liked each other for ever so long?"

"M'm!" Lee nodded. "But Arthur never does anything right away. He does too much mooning and wool-gathering. If a united family can get him to the altar in less than a year they'll have accomplished wonders. There's one thing, though—when we do get him married good and proper, he'll stay married. He's like that at all games. It comes natural to him to keep his eyes in the boat. He's got the finest and sweetest nature of any man in this world, I think."

"Of course, you except present company?"

"Heavens, yes!" cried Lee, and they both laughed.

Then, suddenly, Lee looked him in the eyes quite solemnly.

"I wasn't fooling," she said, "not entirely. I do think you're fine and sweet. I didn't always, but I do now."

There was levity in Renier's words but not in his voice.

"This," he said, "so far has been a perfectly good Tuesday."

"Whatever we do together," said Lee, "you always give me the best of it. It's been a good summer."

"Do you feel as if summer was over, too?"

She nodded.

"That's funny, isn't it? Because it's nowhere near over, is it? Maybe it's the excitement of the Oducalchis' arrival and your brother's engagement. It makes you sort of feel as if there wasn't time to settle back into the regular life and get things going again before the leaves fall."

He spoke. And from the fine striped maple under which they sat there fell, and fluttered slowly into Lee's lap, a great yellowing leaf ribbed with incipient scarlet.