"Well, there's some poppies over there by the fence I want to
pick. And then it's time for us to be going."

"I lose," he laughed. "But you made twenty-five tickle kisses
just the same. I counted 'em. I'll tell you what: you sing 'When
the Harvest Days Are Over,' and let me have your other cool arm
while you're doin' it, and then we'll go."

She sang looking down into his eyes, which ware centered, not on
hers, but on her lips. When she finished, she slipped his hands
from her arms and got up. He was about to start for the horses,
when she held her jacket out to him. Despite the independence
natural to a girl who earned her own living, she had an innate
love of the little services and finenesses; and, also, she
remembered from her childhood the talk by the pioneer women of
the courtesy and attendance of the caballeros of the
Spanish-California days.

Sunset greeted them when, after a wide circle to the east and
south, they cleared the divide of the Contra Costa hills and
began dropping down the long grade that led past Redwood Peak to
Fruitvale. Beneath them stretched the flatlands to the bay,
checkerboarded into fields and broken by the towns of Elmhurst,
San Leandro, and Haywards. The smoke of Oakland filled the
western sky with haze and murk, while beyond, across the bay,
they could see the first winking lights of San Francisco.

Darkness was on them, and Billy had become curiously silent. For
half an hour he had given no recognition of her existence save
once, when the chill evening wind caused him to tuck the robe