Reuben pushed the green gate aside, and entering upon the lawn found Fuller in the act of carrying the table to its customary place. He had been so free of the house, and had been for years so accustomed to enter it and leave it at his will that there was nothing in the world but his own restraining sense of shyness to prevent him from walking past his host with the merest salutation, and fulfilling his own purpose then and there. But the trouble was that to his own disturbed feeling Fuller would infallibly have guessed his purpose, and either of the other members of the quartette arriving, or any chance visitor strolling in, would have known in a moment that he could have no other reason for entering the house than to ask Ruth’s hand in marriage.