points!"

"Sure you're happy?" he smiled.

The familiar little answer came confidently. He heard her humming
as she undressed in a shaft of moonlight; she was never serious
long.

One May day they were picnicking in the big forest. It was a day
of spongy dampness underfoot, sweet and wild with breezes, blue of
sky, and still cold in the shade, if it was heavenly warm in the
sun. Alix, who was hot and panting from the scrambling and
slipping downhill, hung on a bank, with her arm crooked about a
sapling oak, for support, her hat slipped back and hanging
childishly about her neck, and her already brief tramping skirt
displaying an even unusual amount of sensibly booted leg. Below
her Peter on the bank of the stream was gathering firewood. Shafts
of sunlight filtered through the arches of the redwoods high above
the creek, and fell here and there upon the busy currents of the
water. Presently sunshine turned the flames of the brush fire to
pink, a dense column of white smoke rose fragrantly between the
dark-brown, furry trunks.

They had been talking doubtfully of the recent developments of
what Justin and Anne Little called with relish the Strickland Will
Case. Peter, who had for several weeks been investigating the
matter, with a deepening conviction that it was a deuced awkward
affair, had smiled a most pleasant smile as Alix enlarged upon the
delight of giving the whole fortune, should they get it, to
Cherry.