"What! on Saturday?"

"Saturday is my really busy day, don't you know. I guess I could get
off; really, though, I suspect I ought to tell Miss Smith."

He looked a little perplexed; but the direction in which her
inclinations lay was quite clear to him.

"It--it would be decidedly the proper thing," he murmured, "and we
could, of course, invite Miss--"

She saw the difficulty and interrupted him:

"It's quite unnecessary; she'll think I have simply gone for a long
walk." And soon they were speeding down the silent road, breathing the
perfume of the pines.

Now a ride of an early spring morning, in Alabama, over a leisurely old
plantation road and behind a spirited horse, is an event to be enjoyed.
Add to this a man bred to be agreeable and outdoing his training, and a
pretty girl gay with new-found companionship--all this is apt to make a
morning worth remembering.

They turned off the highway and passed through long stretches of
ploughed and tumbled fields, and other fields brown with the dead ghosts
of past years' cotton standing straggling and weather-worn. Long,
straight, or curling rows of ploughers passed by with steaming,
struggling mules, with whips snapping and the yodle of workers or the
sharp guttural growl of overseers as a constant accompaniment.