"Ker-awk!" cried an old blue heron among the cowslips below me. I had almost scared it to death, and it arose on flapping wings and paid me back by frightening me so I screamed as I dodged its shadow.

"What is all this?" asked father behind me.

"Come up and take a seat, and I'll try to tell you," I said.

So he stepped on my pulpit and sat on the top rail, while I stood between his knees, put my arms around his neck, took off his hat and loosened his hair so the wind could wave it, and make his head feel cool and good. His hair curled a little and it was black and fine. His cheeks were pink and his eyes the brightest blue, with long lashes, and heavier brows than any other man I ever have seen. He was the best looking—always so clean and fresh, and you never had to be afraid of him, unless you had been a bad, sinful child. If you were all right, you would walk into his arms, play with his hair, kiss him all you pleased, and there wasn't a thing on earth you couldn't tell him, excepting a secret you had promised to keep.

So I explained all this, and more too. About how I wanted to hunt for the flowers, to see which bloomed first, and watch in what order the birds came, and now it was a splendid time to locate nests, because there were no leaves, so I could see easily, and how glad mother would be to know where the blue goose nested, and her white turkey hen; because she wanted her geese all blue, and the turkeys all white, as fast as she could manage.

Every little thing that troubled me or that I wanted, I told him.

He sat there and he couldn't have listened with more interest or been quieter if I had been a bishop, which is the biggest thing that ever happened at our house; his name was Ninde and he came from Chicago to dedicate our church when it was new. So father listened and thought and held his arms around me, and—

"And you think the Lord was at the bottom of the thing that makes you happy?"

"Well, you always go to Him about what concerns you, and you say, 'Praise the Lord,' when things go to please you."

"I do indeed!" said father. "But I had thought of this running short of school funds as a calamity. If I had been praying about it, I would have asked Him to show me a way to raise money to continue until middle May at least."

"Oh father!"

I just crumpled up in his arms and began to cry; to save me I couldn't help it. He held me tight. At last he said: "I think you are a little overstrained this spring. Maybe you were sicker than we knew, or are growing too fast. Don't worry any more about school. Possibly father can fix it."

Next morning when I wakened, my everyday clothes lay across the foot of the bed, so I called mother and asked if I should put them on; she took me in her arms, and said father thought I had better be in the open, and I needn't go to school any more that spring. I told her I thought I could bear it a few more days, now it was going to be over so soon; but she said I might stay at home, father and Laddie would hear me at night, and I could take my books anywhere I pleased and study when I chose, if I had my spelling and reading learned at evening. NOW, say the Lord doesn't help those who call on Him in faith believing!

Think of being allowed to learn your lessons on the top of the granary, where you could look out of a window above the treetops, lie in the cool wind, and watch swallows and martins. Think of studying in the pulpit when the creek ran high, and the wild birds sang so sweetly you seemed to hear them for the first time in all your life, and hens, guineas, and turkeys made prime music in the orchard. You could see the buds swell, and the little blue flags push through the grass, where Mrs. Mayer had her flowerbed, and the cowslips greening under the water of the swale at the foot of the hill, while there might be a Fairy under any leaf. I was so full, so swelled up and excited, that when I got ready to pick up a book, I could learn a lesson in a few minutes, tell all about it, spell every word, and read it back, front, and sideways. I never learned lessons so quick and so easy in all my life; father, Laddie, and every one of them had to say so. One night, father said to Laddie: "This child is furnishing evidence that our school system is wrong, and our methods of teaching far from right."

"Or is it merely proof that she is different," said Laddie, "and you can't run her through the same groove you could the rest of us?"

"A little of both," said father, "but most that the system is wrong. We are not going at children in a way to gain and hold their interest, and make them love their work. There must be a better way of teaching, and we should find different teachers. You'll have to try the school next year yourself, Laddie."

"I have a little plan about a piece of land I am hoping to take before then," answered Laddie. "It's time for me to try my wings at making a living, and land is my choice. I have fully decided. I stick to the soil!"

"Amen!" cried father. "You please me mightily. I hate to see sons of mine thriving on law, literally making their living out of the fruit of other men's discord. I dislike seeing them sharpen their wits in trade, buying at the lowest limit, extorting the highest. I don't want their horizons limited by city blocks, their feet on pavements, everything under the sun in their heads that concerns a scheme to make money; not room for an hour's thought or study in a whole day, about the really vital things of life. After all, land and its products are the basis of everything; the city couldn't exist a day unless we feed and clothe it. In the things that I consider important, you are a king among men, with your feet on soil you own."

"So I figure it," said Laddie.

"And you are the best educated man I have reared," said father. "Take this other thought with you: on land, the failure of the bank does not break you. The fire another man's carelessness starts, does not wipe out your business or home. You are not in easy reach of contagion. Any time you want to branch out, your mother and I will stand back of you."

"Thank you!" said Laddie. "You backed none of the others. They would resent it. I'll make the best start I can myself, and as they did, stand alone."

Father looked at him and smiled slowly.

"You are right, as always," he said. "I hadn't thought so far. It would make trouble. At any rate, let me inspect and help you select your land."

"That of course!" said Laddie.

I suspect it's not a very nice thing for me to tell, but all of us were tickled silly the day Miss Amelia packed her trunk and left for sure. Mother said she never tried harder in all her days, but Miss Amelia was the most distinctly unlovable person she ever had met. She sympathized with us so, she never said a word when Leon sang:

"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, Which I gaze on so fondly to-day, Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms, Like fairy-gifts fading away, Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still—"

while Miss Amelia drove from sight up the Groveville road.

As he sang Leon stretched out his arms after her vanishing form. "I hope," he said, "that you caught that touching reference to 'the dear ruin,' and could anything be expressed more beautifully and poetically than that 'verdantly still?'"

I feel sorry for a snake. I like hoptoads, owls, and shitepokes. I envy a buzzard the way it can fly, and polecats are beautiful; but I never could get up any sort of feeling at all for Miss Amelia, whether she was birdlike or her true self. So no one was any gladder than I when she was gone.

After that, spring came pushing until you felt shoved. Our family needed me then. If they never had known it before, they found out there was none too many of us. Every day I had to watch the blue goose, and bring in her egg before it was chilled, carrying it carefully so it would not be jarred. I had to hunt the turkey nests and gather their eggs so they would be right for setting. There had to be straw carried from the stack for new nests, eggs marked, and hens set by the dozen. Garden time came, so leaves had to be raked from the beds and from the dooryard. No one was busier than I; but every little while I ran away, and spent some time all by myself in the pulpit, under the hawk oak, or on the roof.

Coming from church that Sunday, when we reached the top of the Big Hill, mother touched father's arm. "Stop a minute," she said, and he checked the horses, while we sat there and wondered why, as she looked and looked all over the farm, then, "Now drive to the top of the Little Hill and turn, and stop exactly on the place from which we first viewed this land together," she said. "You know the spot, don't you?"

"You may well believe I know it," said father. "I can hit it to the inch. You see, children," he went on, "your mother and I arranged before the words were said over us"—he always put it that way—I never in my life heard him say, "when we were married"; he read so many books he talked exactly like a book—"that we would be partners in everything, as long as we lived. When we decided the Ohio land was not quite what we wanted, she sent me farther west to prospect, while she stayed at home and kept the baby. When I reached this land, found it for sale, and within my means, I bought it, and started home happy. Before I'd gone a mile, I turned to look back, and saw that it was hilly, mostly woods, and there was no computing the amount of work it would require to make it what I could see in it; so I began to think maybe she wouldn't like it, and to wish I had brought her, before I closed the deal. By the time I returned home, packed up, and travelled this far on the way back with her, there was considerable tension in my feelings—considerable tension," repeated father as he turned the horses and began driving carefully, measuring the distance from Hoods' and the bridge. At last he stopped, backed a step, and said: "There, mommy, did I hit the spot?"

"You did!" said mother, stepping from the carriage and walking up beside him. She raised one hand and laid it on the lamp near him. He shifted the lines, picked up her hand, and held it tight. Mother stood there looking, just silently looking. May jabbed me in the side, leaned over and whispered:

"Could we but stand where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er, Not our Little Creek, nor dinner getting cold, Could fright us from that shore."

I couldn't help giggling, but I knew that was no proper time, so I hid my head in her lap and smothered the sound the best I could; but they were so busy soft-soddering each other they didn't pay a bit of attention to us.

It was May now, all the leaves were fresh and dustless, everything that flowered at that time was weighted with bloom, bees hummed past, butterflies sailed through the carriage, while birds at the tops of their voices, all of them, every kind there was, sang fit to split; friendly, unafraid bluebirds darted around us, and talked a blue streak from every fence rider. Made you almost crazy to know what they said. The Little Creek flowed at our feet across the road, through the blue-flag swamp, where the red and the yellow birds lived. You could see the sun flash on the water where it emptied into the stream that crossed Deams', and flowed through our pasture; and away beyond the Big Hill arose, with the new church on top, the graveyard around it, the Big Creek flashing at its base. In the valley between lay our fields, meadows, the big red barn, the white house with the yard filled with trees and flowering shrubs, beyond it the garden, all made up, neat and growing; and back of it the orchard in full bloom.

Mother looked and looked. Suddenly she raised her face to father. "Paul," she said, "that first day, did you ever dream it could be made to look like this?"

"No!" said father. "I never did! I saw houses, barns, and cleared fields; I hoped for comfort and prosperity, but I didn't know any place could grow to be so beautiful, and there is something about it, even on a rainy November day, there is something that catches me in the breast, on the top of either of these hills, until it almost stifles me. What is it, Ruth?"

"The Home Feeling!" said mother. "It is in my heart so big this morning I am filled with worship. Just filled with the spirit of worship."

She was rocking on her toes like she does when she becomes too happy at the Meeting House to be quiet any longer, and cries, "Glory!" right out loud. She pointed to the orchard, an immense orchard of big apple trees in full bloom, with two rows of peach trees around the sides. It looked like a great, soft, pinkish white blanket, with a deep pink border, spread lightly on the green earth.

"We planted that way because we thought it was best; how could we know how it would look in bloom time? It seems as if you came to these hilltops and figured on the picture you would make before you cleared, or fenced a field."

"That's exactly what I did," said father. "Many's the hour, all told, that I have stopped my horse on one of these hilltops and studied how to make the place beautiful, as well as productive. That was a task you set me, my girl. You always considered BEAUTY as well as USE about the house and garden, and wherever you worked. I had to hold my part in line."

"You have made it all a garden," said mother. "You have made it a garden growing under the smile of the Master; a very garden of the Lord, father."

Father drew up her hand and held it tight against his heart.

"Your praise is sweet, my girl, sweet!" he said. "I have tried, God knows I have tried, to make it first comfortable, then beautiful, for all of us. To the depths of my soul I thank Him for this hour. I am glad, Oh I am so glad you like your home, Ruth! I couldn't endure it if you complained, found fault and wished you lived elsewhere."

"Why, father!" said my mother in the most surprised voice. "Why, father, it would kill me to leave here. This is ours. We have made it by and through the strength of the Lord and our love for each other. All my days I want to live here, and when I die, I want to lie beside my blessed babies and you, Paul, down by the church we gave the land for, and worked so hard to build. I love it, Oh I love it! See how clean and white the dark evergreens make the house look! See how the big chestnuts fit in and point out the yellow road. I wish we had a row the length of it!"

"They wouldn't grow," said father. "You mind the time I had finding the place those wanted to set their feet?"

"I do indeed!" said mother, drawing her hand and his with it where she could rub her cheek against it. "Now we'll go home and have our dinner and a good rest. I'm a happy woman this day, father, a happy, happy woman. If only one thing didn't worry me——"

"Must there always be a 'fly in the ointment,' mother?"

She looked at him with a smile that was like a hug and kiss, and she said: "I have found it so, father, and I have been happy in spite of it. Where one has such wide interests, at some point there is always a pull, but in His own day, in His own way, the Lord is going to make everything right."

"'Thy faith hath made thee whole,'" quoted father.

Then she stepped into the carriage, and he waited a second, quite long enough to let her see that he was perfectly willing to sit there all day if she wanted him to, and then he slowly and carefully drove home, as he always did when she was in the carriage. Times when he had us children out alone, he went until you couldn't see the spokes in the wheels. He just loved to "speed up" once in a while on a piece of fine road to let us know how going fast felt.

Mother sat there trembling a little, smiling, misty-eyed. I was thinking, for I knew what the "fly in the ointment" was. She had a letter from Shelley yesterday, and she said there wasn't a reason on earth why father or Laddie should spend money to come to Chicago, she would soon be home, she was counting the hours, and she never wanted to leave again. In the start she didn't want to go at all, unless she could stay three years, at the very least. Of course it was that dreadful man, who had made her so beautiful and happy, and then taken away all the joy; how COULD a man do it? It was the hardest thing to understand.

Next morning mother was feeling fine, the world was lovely, Miss Amelia was gone, May was home to help, so she began housecleaning by washing all the curtains. She had been in the kitchen to show Candace how. I had all my work done, and was making friends with a robin brooding in my very own catalpa tree, when Mr. Pryor rode up, tied his horse, and started toward the gate. I knew he and father had quarrelled; that is, father had told him he couldn't say "God was a myth" in this house, and he'd gone home mad as hops; so I knew it would be something mighty important that was bringing him back. I slid from the tree, ran and opened the gate, and led the way up the walk. I opened the front door and asked him in, and then I did the wrong thing. I should have taken his hat, told him to be seated, and said I would see if I could find father; I knew what to do, and how to do it, but because of that about God, I was so excited I made a mistake. I never took his hat, or offered him a chair; I just bolted into the dining-room, looking for father or mother, and left the door wide open, so he thought that wasn't the place to sit, because I didn't give him a chair, and he followed me. The instant I saw mother's face, I knew what I had done. The dining-room was no place for particular company like him, and bringing him in that way didn't give her time to smooth her hair, pull shut her dress band at the neck, put on her collar, and shiny goldstone pin, her white apron, and rub her little flannel rag, with rice flour on it, on her nose to take away the shine. I had made a mess of it.

There she came right in the door, just as she was from the tub. Her hair was damp and crinkled around her face, her neckband had been close in stooping, so she had unfastened it, and tucked it back in a little V-shaped place to give her room and air. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes bright, her lips red as a girl's, and her neck was soft and white. The V-shaped place showed a little spot like baby skin, right where her neck went into her chest. Sure as father kissed her lips, he always tipped back her head, bent lower and kissed that spot too. I had seen hundreds of them go there, and I had tried it myself, lots of times, and it WAS the sweetest place. Seeing what I had done, I stopped breathless. You have to beat most everything you teach a child right into it properly to keep it from making such a botch of things as that. I hardly dared to peep at mother, but when I did, she took my breath worse than the mistake I had made.

Caught, she stood her ground. She never paused a second. Straight to him she went, holding out her hand, and I could see that it was red and warm from pressing the lace in the hot suds. A something flashed over her, that made her more beautiful than she was in her silk dress going to town to help Lucy give a party, and her voice was sweet as the bubbling warbler on the garden fence when he was trying to coax a mate into the privet bush to nest.

Mother asked him to be seated, so he took one of the chairs nearest him, and sat holding his hat in one hand, his whip in the other. Mother drew a chair beside the dining table, dropped her hands on each other, and looking in his eyes, she smiled at him. I tell the same thing over about people's looks, but I haven't told of this smile of mother's; because I never saw exactly how it was, or what it would do to people, until that morning. Then as I watched her—for how she felt decided what would happen to me, after Mr. Pryor was gone I saw something I never had noticed until that minute. She could laugh all over her face, before her lips parted until her teeth showed. She was doing it now. With a wide smile running from cheek to cheek, pushing up a big dimple at each end, her lips barely touching, her eyes dancing, she sat looking at him.

"This IS the most blessed season for warming up the heart," she said. "If you want the half of my kingdom, ask quickly. I'm in the mood to bestow it."

How she laughed! He just had to loosen up a little, and smile back, even though it looked pretty stiff.

"Well, I'll not tax you so far," he said. "I only want Mr. Stanton."

"But he is the whole of the kingdom, and the King to boot!" she laughed, dimpled, and flamed redder.

Mr. Pryor stared at her wonderingly. You could even see the wonder, like it was something you could take hold of. I suppose he wondered what could make a woman so happy, like that.

"Lucky man!" he said. "All of us are not so fortunate."

"Then it must be you don't covet the place or the title," said mother more soberly. "Any woman will crown the man she marries, if he will allow her. Paul went farther. He compelled it."

"I wonder how!" said Mr. Pryor, his eyes steadily watching mother's face.

"By never failing in a million little things, that taken as a whole, make up one mighty big thing, on which he stands like the Rock of Ages."

"Yet they tell me that you are the mother of twelve children," he said, as if he marvelled at something.

"Yes!" cried mother, and the word broke right through a bubbling laugh. "Am I not fortunate above most women? We had the grief to lose two little daughters at the ages of eight and nine, all the others I have, and I rejoice in them."

She reached out, laid a hand on me, drew me to her, and lightly touched my arm, sending my spirits sky-high. She wasn't going to do a thing to me, not even scold! Mr. Pryor stared at her like Jacob Hood does at Laddie when he begins rolling Greek before him, so I guess what mother said must have been Greek to Mr. Pryor.

"I came to see Mr. Stanton," he said suddenly, and crosslike as if he didn't believe a word she said, and had decided she was too foolish to bother with any longer; but he kept on staring. He couldn't quit that, no matter how cross he was. The funniest thing came into my mind. I wondered what on earth he'd have done if she'd gone over, sat on his lap, put her arms around his neck, took his face between her hands and kissed his forehead, eyes, lips, and tousled his hair, like she does father and our boys. I'll bet all I got, he'd have turned to stonier stone than Sabethany. You could see that no one ever served HIM like that in all his old, cold, hard, cross, mysterious, shut-in life. I was crazy to ask, "Say, did anybody ever kiss you?" but I had such a close escape bringing him in wrong, I thought it would be wise not to take any risks so soon after. It was enough to stand beside mother, and hear every word they said. What was more, she wanted me, because she kept her hand on mine, or touched my apron every little while.

"I'm so sorry!" she said. "He was called to town on business. The County Commissioners are sitting to-day."

"They are deciding about the Groveville bridge, and pike?"

"Yes. He is working so hard for them."

"The devil you say! I beg pardon! But it was about that I came. I'm three miles from there, and I'm taxed over sixty pounds for it."

"But you cross the bridge every time you go to town, and travel the road. Groveville is quite a resort on account of the water and lovely country. Paul is very anxious to have the work completed before the summer boarders come from surrounding cities. We are even farther from it than you; but it will cost us as much."

"Are you insane?" cried Mr. Pryor, not at all politely; but you could see that mother was bound she wouldn't become provoked about anything, for she never stopped a steady beam on him. "Spend all that money for strangers to lazy around on a few weeks and then go!"

"But a good bridge and fine road will add to their pleasure, and when they leave, the improvements remain. They will benefit us and our children through all the years to come."

"Talk about 'the land of the free'!" cried Mr. Pryor. "This is a tax-ridden nation. It's a beastly outrage! Ever since I came, it's been nothing but notice of one assessment after another. I won't pay it! I won't endure it. I'll move!"

Mother let go of me, gripped her hands pretty tight together on the table, and she began to talk.

"As for freedom—no man ever was, or is, or will be free," she said, quite as forcibly as he could speak. "You probably knew when you came here that you would find a land tax-ridden from a great civil war of years' duration, and from newness of vast territory to be opened up and improved. You certainly studied the situation."

"'Studied the situation'!" His whip beat across his knee. "'Studied the situation'! My leaving England was—er—the result of intolerable conditions there—in the nature of flight from things not to be endured. I had only a vague idea of the States."

"If England is intolerable, and the United States an outrage, I don't know where in this world you'll go," said mother softly.

Mr. Pryor stared at her sharply.

"Madame is pleased to be facetious," he said sneeringly.

Mother's hands parted, and one of them stretched across the table toward him.

"Forgive me!" she cried. "That was unkind. I know you are in dreadful trouble. I'd give—I'd almost give this right hand to comfort you. I'd do nearly anything to make you feel that you need bear no burden alone; that we'd love to help support you."

"I believe you would," he said slowly, his eyes watching her again. "I believe you would. I wonder why!"

"All men are brothers, in the broader sense," said mother, "and if you'll forgive me, your face bears marks of suffering almost amounting to torture."

She stretched out the other hand.

"You couldn't possibly let us help you?"

Slowly he shook his head.

"Think again!" urged mother. "A trouble shared is half over to start with. You lay a part of it on your neighbours, and your neighbours in this case would be glad, glad indeed, to see you care-free and happy as all men should be."

"We'll not discuss it," he said. "You can't possibly imagine the root of my trouble."

"I shan't try!" said mother. "But let me tell you this: I don't care if you have betrayed your country, blasphemed your God, or killed your own child! So long, as you're a living man, daily a picture of suffering before me, you're a burden on my heart. You're a load on my shoulders, without your consent. I have implored God, I shall never cease to implore Him, until your brow clears, your head is lifted, and your heart is at rest. You can't prevent me! This hour I shall go to my closet and beg Him to have mercy on your poor soul, and when His time comes, He will. You can't help yourself, or you would have done so, long ago. You must accept aid! This must end, or there will be tragedy in your house."

"Madame, there has been!" said Mr. Pryor, shaking as he sat.

"I recognize that," said mother. "The question is whether what has passed is not enough."

"You simply cannot understand!" he said.

"Mr. Pryor," she said, "you're in the position of a man doubly bereft. You are without a country, and without a God. Your face tells every passer-by how you are enjoying that kind of life. Forgive me, if I speak plainly. I admire some things about you so much, I am venturing positive unkindness to try to make you see that in shutting out your neighbours you will surely make them think more, and worse things, than are true. I haven't a doubt in my mind but that your trouble is not one half so dreadful as you imagine while brooding over it. We will pass that. Let me tell you how we feel about this road matter. You see we did our courting in Pennsylvania, married and tried Ohio, and then came on here. We took this land when it was mostly woods. I could point you to the exact spot where we stopped; we visited it yesterday, looked down the hill and selected the place where we would set this house, when we could afford to build it. We moved into the cabin that was on the land first, later built a larger one, and finally this home as we had planned it. Every fruit tree, bush, vine, and flower we planted. Here our children have been born, lived, loved, and left us; some for the graveyard down yonder, some for homes of their own. Always we have planned and striven to transform this into the dearest, the most beautiful spot on earth. In making our home the best we can, in improving our township, county, and state, we are doing our share toward upbuilding this nation."

She began at the a b c's, and gave it to him straight: the whole thing, just as we saw it; and he listened, as if he were a prisoner, and she a judge telling him what he must do to gain his freedom. She put in the birds to keep away the worms, the trees to break the wind, the creeks to save the moisture. She whanged him, and she banged him, up one side, and down the other. She didn't stop to be mincy. She shot things at him like a man talking to another man who had plenty of sense but not a particle of reason. She gave him the reason. She told him exactly why, and how, and where, and also just WHAT he must do to feel RIGHT toward his neighbours, his family, and his God. No preacher ever talked half so well. Yea verily, she was as interesting as the Bishop himself, and far pleasanter to look at. When she ran short of breath, and out of words, she reached both hands toward him again.

"OH DO PLEASE THINK OF THESE THINGS!" she begged. "Do try to believe that I am a sensible person, and know what I am talking about."

"Madame," said Mr. Pryor, "there's no doubt in my mind but you are the most wonderful woman I ever have met. Surely I believe you! Surely I know your plan of life is the true, the only right way. It is one degree added to my humiliation that the ban I am under keeps me from friendly intercourse with so great a lady."

"'Lady'?" said my mother, her eyes widening. "'Lady'? Now it is you who are amused."

"I don't understand!" he said. "Certainly you are a lady, a very great lady."

"Goodness, gracious me!" cried my mother, laughing until her dimples would have held water. "That's the first time in all my life I was ever accused of such a thing."

"Again, I do not comprehend," said Mr. Pryor, as if vexed about all he would endure.

Mother laughed on, and as she did so she drew back her hands and studied them. Then she looked at him again, one pink dimple flashing here and there, all over her face.

"Well, to begin at the root of the matter," she said, "that is an enormous big word that you are using lightly. Any one in petticoats is not a lady—by no means! A lady must be born of unsullied blood for at least three generations, on each side of her house. Think for a minute about where you are going to fulfil that condition. Then she must be gentle by nature, and rearing. She must know all there is to learn from books, have wide experience to cover all emergencies, she must be steeped in social graces, and diplomatic by nature. She must rise unruffled to any emergency, never wound, never offend, always help and heal, she must be perfect in deportment, virtue, wifehood and motherhood. She must be graceful, pleasing and beautiful. She must have much leisure to perfect herself in learning, graces and arts——"

"Madame, you draw an impossible picture!" cried Mr. Pryor.

"I draw the picture of the only woman on earth truly entitled to be called a lady. You use a good word lightly. I have told you what it takes to make a lady—now look at me!"

How she laughed! Mr. Pryor looked, but he didn't laugh.

"More than ever you convince me that you are a lady, indeed," he said.

Mother wiped her eyes.

"My dear man!" she cried, "I'm the daughter of a Dutch miller, who lived on a Pennsylvania mountain stream. There never was a school anywhere near us, and father and mother only taught us to work. Paul Stanton took a grist there, and saw me. He married me, and brought me here. He taught me to read and write. I learned my lessons with my elder children. He has always kept school in our house, every night of his life. Our children supposed it was for them; I knew it was quite as much for me. While I sat at knitting or sewing, I spelled over the words he gave out. I know nothing of my ancestors, save that they came from the lowlands of Holland, down where there were cities, schools, and business. They were well educated, but they would not take the trouble to teach their children. As I have spoken to you, my husband taught me. All I know I learn from him, from what he reads aloud, and places he takes me. I exist in a twenty-mile radius, but through him, I know all lands, principalities and kingdoms, peoples and customs. I need never be ashamed to go, or afraid to speak, anywhere."

"Indeed not!" cried Mr. Pryor.

"But when you think on the essentials of a real lady—and then picture me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians, Gypsies, wild animals—and they used to be bad enough—why, I mind one time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair, and through the rough puncheon floor a copperhead stuck up its gleam of bronzy gold, and shot its darting tongue within a foot of her bare leg. By all accounts, a lady would have reached for her smelling salts and gracefully fainted away; in fact, a lady never would have been in such a place at all. It was my job to throw the first thing I could lay my hands on so straight and true that I would break that snake's neck, and send its deadly fangs away from my baby. I did it with Paul's plane, and neatly too! Then I had to put the baby on the bed and tear up every piece of the floor to see that the snake had not a mate in hiding there, for copperheads at that season were going pairs. Once I was driven to face a big squaw, and threatened the life of her baby with a red-hot poker while she menaced mine with a hunting knife. There is not one cold, rough, hard experience of pioneer life that I have not endured. Shoulder to shoulder, and heart to heart, I've stood beside my man, and done what had to be done, to build this home, rear our children, save our property. Many's the night I have shivered in a barn doctoring sick cattle and horses we could ill afford to lose. Time and again I have hung on and brought things out alive, after the men gave up and quit. A lady? How funny!"

"The amusement is all on your part, Madame."

"So it seems!" said mother. "But you see, I know so well how ridiculous it is. When I think of the life a woman must lead in order to be truly a lady, when I review the life I have been forced to live to do my share in making this home, and rearing these children, the contrast is too great. I thank God for any part I have been able to take. Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother. That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest thing on earth. Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible tribute."

"I have nothing to change, in the face of your argument," said Mr. Pryor. "Our loved Queen on her throne is no finer lady."

That time mother didn't laugh. She looked straight at him a minute and then she said: "Well, for an Englishman, as I know them, you have said the last word. Higher praise there is none. But believe me, I make no such claim. To be a good wife and mother is the end toward which I aspire. To hold the respect and love of my husband is the greatest object of my life."

"Then you have succeeded. You stand a monument to wifehood; your children prove your idea of motherhood," said Mr. Pryor. "How in this world have you managed it? The members of your family whom I have seen are fine, interesting men and women, educated above the average. It is not idle curiosity. I am deeply interested in knowing how such an end came to be accomplished here on this farm. I wish you would tell me just how you have gone about schooling your children."

"By educating ourselves before their coming, and with them afterward. Self-control, study, work, joy of life, satisfaction with what we have had, never-ending strife to go higher, and to do better—Dr. Fenner laughs when I talk of these things. He says he can take a little naked Hottentot from the jungle, and educate it to the same degree that I can one of mine. I don't know; but if these things do not help before birth, at least they do not hinder; and afterward, you are in the groove in which you want your children to run. With all our twelve there never has been one who at nine months of age did not stop crying if its father lifted his finger, or tapped his foot and told it to. From the start we have rigorously guarded our speech and actions before them. From the first tiny baby my husband has taught all of them to read, write and cipher some, before they went to school at all. He is always watching, observing, studying: the earth, the stars, growing things; he never comes to a meal but he has seen something that he has or will study out for all of us. There never has been one day in our home on which he did not read a new interesting article from book or paper; work out a big problem, or discuss some phase of politics, religion, or war. Sometimes there has been a little of all of it in one day, always reading, spelling, and memory exercises at night. He has a sister who twice in her life has repeated the Bible as a test before a committee. He, himself, can go through the New Testament and all of the Old save the books of the generations. He always says he considers it a waste of gray matter to learn them. He has been a schoolmaster, his home his schoolroom, his children, wife and helpers his pupils; the common things of life as he meets them every day, the books from which we learn.

"I was ignorant at first of bookish subjects, but in his atmosphere, if one were no student, and didn't even try to keep up, or forge ahead, they would absorb much through association. Almost always he has been on the school board and selected the teachers; we have made a point of keeping them here, at great inconvenience to ourselves, in order to know as much of them as possible, and to help and guide them in their work. When the children could learn no more here, for most of them we have managed the high school of Groveville, especially after our daughter moved there, and for each of them we have added at least two years of college, music school, or whatever the peculiar bent of the child seemed to demand.

"Before any daughter has left our home for one of her own, she has been taught all I know of cleanliness about a house, cookery, sewing, tending the sick, bathing and dressing the new born. She has to bake bread, pie, cake, and cook any meat or vegetable we have. She has had her bolt of muslin to make as she chose for her bedding, and linen for her underclothing. The quilts she pieced and the blankets she wove have been hers. All of them have been as well provided for as we could afford. They can knit, darn, patch, tuck, hem, and embroider, set a hen and plant a garden. I go on a vacation and leave each of them to keep house for her father a month, before she enters a home of her own. They are strong, healthy girls; I hope all of them are making a good showing at being useful women, and I know they are happy, so far at least."

"Wonderful!" said Mr. Pryor.

"Father takes the boys in hand and they must graduate in a straight furrow, an even fence, planting and tending crops, trimming and grafting trees, caring for stock, and handling plane, auger and chisel. Each one must select his wood, cure, fashion, and fit his own ax with a handle, grind and swing it properly, as well as cradle, scythe and sickle. They must be able to select good seed grain, boil sap, and cure meat. They must know animals, their diseases and treatment, and when they have mastered all he can teach them, and done each thing properly, they may go for their term at college, and make their choice of a profession. As yet I'm sorry to say but one of them has come back to the land."

"You mean Laddie?"

"Yes."

"He has decided to be a farmer?"

"He is determined to make the soil yield his living."

"I am sorry—sorry indeed to hear it," said Mr. Pryor. "He has brain and education to make a brilliant figure at law or statesmanship; he would do well in trade."

"What makes you think he would not do well on land?"

"Wasted!" cried Mr. Pryor. "He would be wasted!"

"Hold a bit!" said mother, her face flushing as it did when she was very provoked. "My husband is, and always has been, on land. He is far from being wasted. He is a power in this community. He has sons in cities in law and in trade. Not one of them has the friends, and the influence on his time, that his father has. Any day he says the word, he can stand in legislative halls, and take any part he chooses in politics. He prefers his home and family, and the work he does here, but let me tell you, no son of his ever had his influence or opportunity, or ever will have."

"All this is news to me," said Mr. Pryor.

"You didn't expect us to come over, force our way in and tell you?"

It was his turn to blush and he did.

"Laddie has been at our house often," he said. "He might have mentioned——"

Mother laughed. She was the gayest that morning.

"He 'might,' but he never would. Neither would I if you hadn't seemed to think that the men who do the things Mr. Stanton REFUSES to do are the ones worth while."

"He could accomplish much in legislative halls."

"He figures in the large. He thinks that to be a commissioner, travel his county and make all of it the best possible, to stand in primaries and choose only worthy men for all offices, is doing a much bigger work than to take one place for himself, and strive only for that. Besides, he really loves his land, his house, and family. He says no man has a right to bring twelve children into the world and not see personally to rearing and educating them. He thinks the farm and the children too much for me, and he's sure he is doing the biggest thing for the community at large, to go on as he does."

"Perhaps so," said Mr. Pryor slowly. "He should know best. Perhaps he is."

"I make no doubt!" said mother, lifting her head proudly. "And as Laddie feels and has fitted himself, I look to see him go head and shoulders above any other son I have. Trade is not the only way to accumulate. Law is not the only path to the legislature. Comfort, independence, and freedom, such as we know here, is not found in any city I ever have visited. We think we have the best of life, and we are content on land. We have not accumulated much money; we have spent thousands; we have had a big family for which to provide, and on account of the newness of the country, taxes always have been heavy. But we make no complaint. We are satisfied. We could have branched off into fifty different things after we had a fair start here. We didn't, because we preferred life as we worked it out for ourselves. Paul says when he leaves the city, and his horses' hoofs strike the road between our fields, he always lifts his head higher, squares his shoulders, and feels a man among men. To own land, and to love it, is a wonderful thing, Mr. Pryor."

She made me think of something. Ever since I had added to my quill and arrow money, the great big lot at Easter, father had shared his chest till with me. The chest stood in our room, and in it lay his wedding suit, his every Sunday clothes, his best hat with a red silk handkerchief in the crown, a bundle of precious newspapers he was saving on account of rare things in them he wanted for reference, and in the till was the wallet of ready money he kept in the house for unexpected expense, his deeds, insurance papers, all his particular private papers, the bunches of lead pencils, slate pencils, and the box of pens from which he supplied us for school. Since I had grown so rich, he had gone partners with me, and I might lift the lid, open the till and take out my little purse that May bought from the huckster for my last birthday. I wasn't to touch a thing, save my own, and I never did; but I knew precious well what was there.

If Mr. Pryor thought my father didn't amount to much because he lived on land; if it made him think more of him, to know that he could be in the legislature if he chose, maybe he'd think still more——

I lifted the papers, picked it up carefully, and slipping back quietly, I laid it on Mr. Pryor's knee. He picked it up and held it a minute, until he finished what he was saying to mother, and then he looked at it. Then he looked long and hard. Then he straightened up and looked again.

"God bless my soul!" he cried.

You see when he was so astonished he didn't know what he was saying, he called on God, just as father says every one does. I took a side look at mother. Her face was a little extra flushed, but she was still smiling; so I knew she wasn't angry with me, though of course she wouldn't have shown the thing herself. She and father never did, except as each of us grew big enough to be taught about the Crusaders. Father said he didn't care the snap of his finger about it, except as it stood for hardihood and bravery. But Mr. Pryor cared! He cared more than he could say. He stared, and stared, and over and over he wonderingly repeated:

"God bless my soul!"

"Where did you get the crest of the Earl of Eastbrooke, the master of Stanton house?" he demanded. "Stanton house!" he repeated. "Why—why, the name! It's scarcely possible, but——"

"But there it is!" laughed mother. "A mere bauble for show and amounting to nothing on earth save as it stands a mark for brave men who have striven to conquer."

"Surgere tento!" read Mr. Pryor, from the little shield. "Four shells! Madame, I know men who would give their lives to own this, and to have been born with the right to wear it. It came to your husband in straight line?"

"Yes," said mother, "but generations back. He never wore it. He never would. He only saves it for the children."

"It goes to your eldest son?"

"By rights, I suppose it should," said mother. "But father mentioned it the other night. He said none of his boys had gone as he tried to influence them, unless Laddie does now in choosing land for his future, and if he does, his father is inclined to leave it to him, and I agree. At our death it goes to Laddie I am quite sure."

"Well, I hope—I hope," said Mr. Pryor, "that the young man has the wit to understand what this would mean to him in England."

"His wit is just about level with his father's," said mother. "He never has been in England, and most probably he never will be. I don't think it means a rap more to Laddie than it does to my husband. Laddie is so busy developing the manhood born in him, he has no time to chase the rainbow of reflected glory, and no belief in its stability if he walked in its light. The child of my family to whom that trinket really means something is Little Sister, here. When Leon came in with the thief, I thought he should have it; but after all, she is the staunchest little Crusader I have."

Mr. Pryor looked me over with much interest.

"Yes, yes! No doubt!" he said. "But the male line! This priceless treasure should descend to one of the male line! To one whose name will remain Stanton! To Laddie would be best, no doubt! No doubt at all!"

"We will think about it," said mother serenely as Mr. Pryor arose to go.

He apologized for staying so long, and mother said it hadn't been long, and asked him the nicest ever to come again. She walked in the sunlight with him and pointed out the chestnuts. She asked what he thought of a line of trees to shade the road, and they discussed whether the pleasure they would give in summer would pay for the dampness they would hold in winter. They wandered around the yard and into the garden. She sent me to bring a knife, trowel, and paper, so when he started for home, he was carrying a load of cuttings, and roots to plant.

When father came from town that evening, at the first sight of him, she went straight into his arms, her face beaming; she had been like a sun all that day. Some of it must have been joy carried over from yesterday.

"Praise God, the wedge is in!" she cried.

Father held her tight, stroked her hair, and began smiling without having the least idea why, but he very well knew that whatever pleased her like that was going to be good news for him also.

"What has happened, mother?" he asked.

"Mr. Pryor came over about the road and bridge tax, and oh Paul! I've said every word to him I've been bursting to say from the very start. Every single word, Paul!"

"How did he take it?"

"Time will tell. Anyway, he heard it, all of it, and he went back carrying a load of things to plant. Only think of that! Once he begins planting, and watching things grow, the home feeling is bound to come. I tell you, Paul, the wedge is in! Oh I'm so happy!"



CHAPTER XIV

The Crest of Eastbrooke

"Sow;—and look onward, upward, Where the starry light appears,— Where, in spite of coward's doubting, Or your own heart's trembling fears, You shall reap in joy the harvest You have sown to-day in tears."

"Any objections to my beginning to break ground on the west eighty to-day?" asked Laddie of father at breakfast Monday morning.

"I had thought we would commence on the east forty, when planning the work."

"So had I," said Laddie. "But since I thought that, a very particular reason has developed for my beginning to plow the west eighty at once, and there is a charming little ditty I feel strongly impelled to whistle every step of the way."

Father looked at him sharply, and so, I think, did all of us. And because we loved him deeply, we saw that his face was a trifle pale for him; his clear eyes troubled, in spite of his laughing way. He knew we were studying him too, but he wouldn't have said anything that would make us look and question if he had minded our doing it. That was exactly like Laddie. He meant it when he said he hated a secret. He said there was no place on earth for a man to look for sympathy and love if he couldn't find it in his own family; and he never had been so happy since I had been big enough to notice his moods as he had been since all of us knew about the Princess. He didn't wait for father to ask why he'd changed his mind about the place to begin.

"You see," he said, "a very charming friend of mine expressed herself strongly last night about the degrading influence of farming, especially that branch of agriculture which evolves itself in a furrow; hence it is my none too happy work to plow the west eighty where she can't look our way without seeing me; and I have got to whistle my favourite 'toon' where she must stop her ears if she doesn't hear; and then it will be my painful task, I fear, to endeavour to convince her that I am still clean, decent, and not degraded."

"Oh Laddie!" cried mother.

"Abominable foolishness!" roared father like he does roar once in about two years.

"Isn't it now?" asked Laddie sweetly. "I don't know what has got into her head. She has seen me plowing fifty times since their land has joined ours, and she never objected before."

"I can tell you blessed well!" said mother. "She didn't care two hoots how much my son plowed, but it makes a difference when it comes to her lover."

"Maw, you speak amazing reckless," said Laddie, "if I thought there was anything in THAT feature of the case, I'd attempt a Highland fling on the ridgepole of our barn."

"Be serious!" said father sternly. "This is no laughing matter."

"That's precisely why I am laughing," said Laddie. "Would it help me any to sit down and weep? I trow not! I have thought most of the silent watches—by the way they are far from silent in May—and as I read my title clear, it's my job to plow the west eighty immejit."

Father tried to look stern, but he just had to laugh.

"All right then, plow it!" he said.

"What did she say?" asked mother.

"Phew!" Laddie threw up both hands. "She must have been bottled some time on the subject. The ferment was a spill of considerable magnitude. The flood rather overwhelmed me, because it was so unexpected. I had been taking for granted that she accepted my circumstances and surroundings as she did me. But no, kind friends, far otherwise! She said last night, in the clearest English I ever heard spoken impromptu, that I was a man suitable for her friend, but I would have to change my occupation before I could be received on more than a friendly footing."

"'On more than a friendly footing'?" repeated mother.

"You have her exact words," said Laddie. "Kindly pass the ham."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing! I am going to plow the answer. Please don't object to my beginning this morning."

"You try yourself all winter to get as far as you have, and then upset the bowl like this?" cried mother.

"Softly, mummy, softly!" said Laddie. "What am I to do? I've definitely decided on my work. I see land and life, as you and father taught me, in range and in perspective far more than you've got from it. You had a first hand wrestle. The land I covet has been greatly improved already. I can do what I choose with it, making no more strenuous effort than plowing; and I am proud to say that I LOVE to plow. I like my feet in the soil. I want my head in the spring air. I can become almost tipsy on the odours that fill my nostrils. Music evolved by the Almighty is plenty good enough for me. I'm proud of a spanking big team, under the control of a touch or a word. I enjoy farming, and I am going to be a farmer. Plowing is one of the most pleasing parts of the job. Sowing the seed beats it a little, from an artistic standpoint, either is preferable to haying, threshing, or corn cutting: all are parts of my work, so I'm going to begin. Mother, I hope you don't mind if I take your grays. I'll be very careful; but the picture I present to my girl to-day is going to go hard with her at best, so I'd like to make it level best."

He arose, went around and knelt beside mother. He took her, chair and all, in his arms:

"Best of mothers! on my breast Lean thy head, and sink to rest."

She quoted. Mother laughed.

"Mammy," he asked bending toward her, "am I clean?"

"You goose!" she said, putting her arms around him and holding him tight.

"Gander love," said Laddie, turning up his face for a kiss. "Honest mother, you have been through nigh unto forty years of it, tell me, can a man be a farmer and keep neat enough not to be repulsive to a refined woman?"

"Your father is the answer," said mother. "All of you know how perfectly repulsive he is and always has been to me."

"'Repulsive,"' said father. "That's an ugly word!"

"There are a whole lot of unpleasant things that peep around corners occasionally," said Laddie. "But whoever of you dear people it was that showed Mr. Pryor the Crest of Eastbrooke, brought out this particular dragon for me to slay."

"Tut, tut! Now what does that mean?" said father. "Have we had a little exhibition of that especial brand of pride that goes before a fall?"

"We have! and I take the tumble," said Laddie. "Watch me start! 'Jack fell down and broke his crown.' Question—will 'Jill come tumbling after?'"

My heart stopped and I was shaking in my bare feet, because I wore no shoes to shake in. Oh my soul! No matter how Laddie jested I knew he was almost killed; the harder he made fun, the worse he was hurt. I opened my mouth to say I did it, I had to, but Leon began to talk.

"Well, I think she's smart!" he cried. "If she was going to give you the mitten, why didn't she do it long ago?"

"She had to find out first whether there were a possibility of her wanting to keep it," said Laddie.

"You're sure you are all signed, sealed, and delivered on this plowing business, are you?" asked Leon.

"Dead sure!" said Laddie.

"All right, if you like it!" said Leon. "None for me after college! But say, you can be a farmer and not plow, you know. You go trim the trees, and work at cleaner, more gentlemanly jobs. I'll plow that field. I'd just as soon as not. I plowed last year and you said I did well, didn't you, father?"

"Yes, on the potato patch," said father. "A cornfield is a different thing. I fear you are too light."

"Oh but that was a year ago!" cried Leon.

He pushed back his chair and went to father.

"Just feel my biceps now! Most like steel!" he boasted. "A fellow can grow a lot in a year, and all the riding I've been doing, and all the exercise I've had. Cert' I can plow that meadow."

"You're all right, shaver," said Laddie. "I'll not forget your offer; but in this case it wouldn't help. Either the Princess takes her medicine or I take mine. I'm going to live on land: I'm going to plow in plain sight of the Pryor house this week, if I have to hire to Jacob Hood to get the chance. May I plow, and may I take the grays, father?"

"Yes!" said father roundly.

"Then here goes!" said Laddie. "You needn't fret, mother. I'll not overheat them. I must give a concert simultaneous with this plowing performance, and I'm particular about the music, so I can't go too fast. Also, I'll wrap the harness."

"Goodness knows I'm not thinking about the horses," said mother.

"No, but if they turned up next Sunday, wind-broken, and with nice large patches of hair rubbed from their sides, you would be! If you were me, would you whistle, or vocalize to start on?"

Mother burst right out crying and laid her face all tear-wet against him. Laddie kissed her, and wiped away the tears, teased her, and soon as he could he bolted from the east door; but I was closest, so I saw plainly that his eyes were wet too. My soul and body! AND I HAD DONE IT! I might as well get it over.

"I showed Mr. Pryor the trinket," I said.

"How did you come to do that?" asked father sternly.

"When he was talking with mother. He told her Laddie would be 'wasted' farming——"

"Wasted?"

"That's what he said. Mother told him you had always farmed and you were a 'power in this community.' She told him about what you did, because you wanted to, and what you COULD do if you chose, about holding office, you know, and that seemed to make him think heaps more of you, so I thought it would be a good thing for him to know about the Crusaders too, and I ran and got the crest. I THOUGHT it would help——"

"And so it will," said mother. "They constantly make the best showing they can, we might as well, too. The trouble is they got more than they expected. They thought they could look down on us, and patronize us, if they came near at all; when they found we were quite as well educated as they, had as much land, could hold prominent offices if we chose, and had the right to that bauble, they veered to the other extreme. Now they seem to demand that we quit work——"

"Move to the city, 'sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,'" suggested father.

"Exactly!" said mother. "They'll have to find out we are running our own business; but I'm sorry it fell to Laddie to show them. You could have done it better. It will come out all right. The Princess is not going to lose a man like Laddie on account of how he makes his money."

"Don't be too confident," said father. "With people of their stripe, how much money a man can earn, and at what occupation, constitute the whole of life."

She wasn't too confident. Yesterday she had been so happy she almost flew. To-day she kept things going, and sang a lot, but nearly every time you looked at her you could see her lips draw tight, a frown cross her forehead, and her head shake. Pretty soon we heard a racket on the road, so we went out. There was Laddie with the matched team of carriage horses and a plow. Now, in dreadfully busy times, father let Ned and Jo work a little, but not very much. They were not plow horses; they were roadsters. They liked to prance, and bow their necks and dance to the carriage. It shamed them to be hitched to a plow. They drooped their heads and slunk along like dogs caught sucking eggs. But they were a sight on the landscape. They were lean and slender and yet round too, matched dapple gray on flank and side, with long snow-white manes and tails. No wonder mother didn't want them to work. Laddie had reached through the garden fence and hooked a bunch of red tulips and yellow daffodils. The red was at Jo's ear, and the yellow at Ned's, and they did look fine. So did he! Big, strong, clean, a red flower in his floppy straw hat band; and after he drove through the gate, he began a shrill, fifelike whistle you could have heard a half mile:

"See the merry farmer boy, tramp the meadows through, Swing his hoe in careless joy, while dashing off the dew. Bobolink in maple high, trills a note of glee, Farmer boy in gay reply now whistles cheerily."

The chorus was all whistle, and it was written for folks who could. It went up until it almost split the echoes, and Laddie could easily sail a measure above the notes. He did it too. As for me, I kept from sight. For a week Laddie whistled and plowed. He wore that tune threadbare, and got an almost continuous pucker on his lips. Leon said if he didn't stop whistling, and sing more, the girls would think he was doing a prunes and prisms stunt. So after that he sang the words, and whistled the chorus. But he made no excuse to go, and he didn't go, to Pryors'. When Sunday came, he went to Westchester to see Elizabeth, and stayed until Monday morning. Not once that week did the Princess ride past our house, or her father either. By noon Monday Laddie was back in the field, and I had all I could bear. He was neither whistling nor singing so much now, because he was away at the south end, where he couldn't be seen or heard at Pryors'. He almost scoured the skin from him, and he wore his gloves more carefully than usual. If he soiled his clothing in the least, and it looked as if he would make more than his share of work, he washed the extra pieces at night.

Tuesday morning I hurried with all my might, and then I ran to the field where he was. I climbed on the fence, sat there until he came up, and then I gave him some cookies. He stopped the horses, climbed beside me and ate them. Then he put his arms around me and hugged me tight.

"Laddie, do you know I did it?" I wailed.

"Did you now?" said Laddie. "No, I didn't know for sure, but I had suspicions. You always have had such a fondness for that particular piece of tinware."

"But Laddie, it means so much!"

"Doesn't it?" said Laddie. "A few days ago no one could have convinced me that it meant anything at all to me, or ever could. Just look at me now!"

"Don't joke, Laddie! Something must be done."

"Well, ain't I doing it?" asked Laddie. "Look at all these acres and acres of Jim-dandy plowing!"

"Don't!" I begged. "Why don't you go over there?"

"No use, Chicken," said Laddie. "You see her exact stipulation was that I must CHANGE MY OCCUPATION before I came again."

"What does she want you to do?"

"Law, I think. Unfortunately, I showed her a letter from Jerry asking me to enter his office this fall."

"Hadn't you better do it, Laddie?"

"How would you like to be shut in little, stuffy rooms, and set to droning over books and papers every hour of the day, all your life, and to spend the best of your brain and bodily strength straightening out other men's quarrels?"

"Oh Laddie, you just couldn't!" I cried.

"Precisely!" said Laddie. "I just couldn't, and I just won't!"

"What can you do?"

"I might compromise on stock," he said. "I could follow the same occupation as her father, and with better success. Neither he nor his men get the best results from horses. They don't understand them, especially the breeds they are attempting to handle. Most Arab horsemen are tent dwellers. They travel from one oasis to another with their stock. At night their herds are gathered around them as children. As children they love them, pet them, feed them. Each is named for a divinity, a planet or a famous ruler, and the understanding between master and beast is perfect. Honestly, Little Sister, I think you have got to believe in the God of Israel, in order to say the right word to an Arabian horse; and I know you must believe in the God of love. A beast of that breed, jerked, kicked, and scolded is a fine horse ruined. If I owned half the stock Mr. Pryor has over there, I could put it in such shape for market that I could get twice from it what his men will."

"Are Thomas and James rough with the horses?"

"'Like master, like man,'" quoted Laddie. "They are! They are foolish with the Kentucky strain, and fools with the Arab; and yet, that combination beats the world. But I must get on with the P.C. job."

He slid from the fence, took a drink from his water jug, and pulled a handful of grass for each horse. As he stood feeding them, I almost fell from the top rail.

"Laddie!" I whispered. "Look! Mr. Pryor is halfway across the field on Ranger."

"So?" said Laddie. "Now I wonder——"

"Shall I go?"

"No indeed!" said Laddie. "Stay right where you are. It can't be anything of much importance."

At first it didn't seem to be. They talked about the weather, the soil, the team. Laddie scooped a handful of black earth, and holding it out, told Mr. Pryor all about how good it was, and why, and he seemed interested. Then they talked about everything; until if he had been Jacob Hood, he would have gone away. But just at the time when I expected him to start, he looked at Laddie straight and hard.

"I missed you Sabbath evening," he said.

Then I looked at him. He had changed, some way. He seemed more human, more like our folks, less cold and stern.

"I sincerely hope it was unanimous," said Laddie.

Mr. Pryor had to laugh.

"It was a majority, at any rate."

Laddie stared dazed. You see that was kind of a joke. An easy one, because I caught it; but we were not accustomed to expecting a jest from Mr. Pryor. Not one of us dreamed there was a joke between his hat crown and his boot soles. Then Laddie laughed; but he sobered quickly.

"I'm mighty sorry if Mrs. Pryor missed me," he said. "I thought of her. I have grown to be her devoted slave, and I hoped she liked me."

"You put it mildly," said Mr. Pryor. "Since you didn't come when she expected you, we've had the worst time with her that we have had since we reached this da—ah—er—um—this country."

"Could you make any suggestion?" asked Laddie.

"I could! I would suggest that you act like the sensible fellow I know you to be, and come as usual, at your accustomed times."

"But I'm forbidden, man!" cried Laddie.

Ugh! Such awful things as Mr. Pryor said.

"Forbidden!" he cried. "Is a man's roof his own, or is it not? While I live, I propose to be the head of my family. I invite you! I ask you! Mrs. Pryor and I want you! What more is necessary?"

"TWO things," said Laddie, just as serenely. "That Miss Pryor wants me, and that I want to come."

"D'ye mean to tell me that you DON'T want to come, eh? After the fight you put up to force your way in!"

Laddie studied the sky, a whimsy smile on his lips.

"Now wasn't that a good fight?" he inquired. "I'm mighty proud of it! But not now, or ever, do I wish to enter your house again, if Miss Pryor doesn't want, and welcome me."

Then he went over, took Mr. Pryor's horse by the head, and began working with its bridle. It didn't set right some way, and Mr. Pryor had jerked, spurred, and mauled, until there was a big space tramped to mortar. Laddie slid his fingers beneath the leather, eased it a little, and ran his hands over the fretful creature's head. It just stopped, stood still, pushed its nose under his arm, and pressed against his side. Mr. Pryor arose in one stirrup, swung around and alighted. He looped an arm through the bridle rein, and with both hands gripped his whipstock.

"How the devil do you do it?" he asked, as if he were provoked.

"First, the bridle was uncomfortable; next, you surely know, Mr. Pryor, that a man can transfer his mental state to his mount."

Laddie pointed to the churned up earth.

"THAT represents your mental state; THIS"—he slid his hand down the neck of the horse—"portrays mine."

Mr. Pryor's face reddened, but Laddie was laughing so heartily he joined in sort of sickly-like.

"Oh I doubt if you are so damnably calm!" he cried.

"I'm CALM enough, so far as that goes," said Laddie. "I'm not denying that I've got about all the heartache I can conveniently carry."

"Do you mind telling me how far this affair has gone?"

"Wouldn't a right-minded man give the woman in the case the first chance to answer that question? I greatly prefer that you ask Miss Pryor."

If ever I felt sorry for any one, I did then for Mr. Pryor. He stood there gripping the whip with both hands and he looked exactly as if the May wind might break him into a thousand tiny pieces, and every one of them would be glass.

"Um—er——" he said at last. "You're right, of course, but unfortunately, Pamela and her mother did not agree with my motives, or my course in coming to this country; and while there is no outward demonstration er—um—other than Mrs. Pryor's seclusion; yet, er—um!—I am forced to the belief that I'm NOT in their confidence."

"I see!" said Laddie. "And of course you love your daughter as any man would love so beautiful a child, and when she is all he has——" I thought the break was coming right there, but Mr. Pryor clenched his whip and put it off; still, any one watching with half an eye could see that it was only put off, and not for long at that,—"It has been my idea, Mr. Pryor, that the proper course for me was to see if I could earn any standing with your daughter. If I could, and she gave me permission, then I intended coming to you the instant I knew how she felt. But in such a case as this, I don't think I shall find the slightest hesitation in telling you anything you want to know, that I am able."

"You don't know how you stand with her?"

Laddie took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. His feet were planted widely apart, and his face was sober enough for any funeral now. At last he spoke.

"I've been trying to figure that out," he said slowly. "I believe the situation is as open to you as it is to me. She was a desperately lonely, homesick girl, when she caught my eye and heart; and I placed myself on her horizon. In her case the women were slow in offering friendship, because, on account of Mrs. Pryor's seclusion, none was felt to be wanted; then Miss Pryor was different in dress and manner. I found a way to let her see that I wanted to be friends, and she accepted my friendship, and at the same time allowed it go only so far. On a few rare occasions, I've met her alone, and we've talked out various phases of life together; but most of our intercourse has taken place in your home, and in your presence. You probably have seen her meet and entertain her friends frequently. I should think you would be more nearly able to gauge my standing with her than I am."

"You haven't told her that you love her?"

"Haven't I though?" cried Laddie. "Man alive! What do you think I'm made of? Putty? Told her? I've told her a thousand times. I've said it, and sung it and whistled it, and looked it, and lived it. I've written it, and ridden it, and this week I've plowed it! Your daughter knows as she knows nothing else, in all this world, that she has only to give me one glance, one word, one gesture of invitation, to find me before her six feet of the worst demoralized beefsteak a woman ever undertook to handle. Told her? Ye Gods! I should say I've told her!"

If any of Pryors had been outdoors they certainly could have heard Mr. Pryor. How he laughed! He shook until he tottered. Laddie took his arm and led him to the fence. He lifted a broad top rail, pushed it between two others across a corner and made a nice comfortable seat for him. After a while Mr. Pryor wiped his eyes. Laddie stood watching him with a slow grin on his face.

"And she hasn't given the signal you are waiting for?" he asked at last.

Laddie slowly shook his head.

"Nary the ghost of a signal!" he said. "Now we come to Sunday before last. I only intimated, vaguely, that a hint of where I stood would be a comfort—and played Jonah. The whale swallowed me at a gulp, and for all my inches, never batted an eye. You see, a few days before I showed her a letter from my brother Jerry, because I thought it might interest her. There was something in it to which I had paid little or no attention, about my going to the city and beginning work in his law office; to cap that, evidently you had mentioned before her our prize piece of family tinware. There was a culmination like a thunder clap in a January sky. She said everything that was on her mind about a man of my size and ability doing the work I am, and then she said I must change my occupation before I came again."

"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill, abominable air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"

Then Laddie laughed.

"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me! It never occurred to me that she would not be familiar with that air, and understand its application. Do you mean to crush me further by telling me that all my perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling was lost?"

"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr. Pryor. "I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out exactly what it did mean. It seemed to combine defiance with pleading, and through and over all ran a note of glee that was really quite charming."

"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie. "'A note of glee'—the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world, busy with congenial work."

"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly joyful."

"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie. "That was a whistle to keep up my courage. The joy was in the song, not in me! Last week was black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting pessimist."

"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut! That fine team, flower bedecked, and the continuous concert!"

"But I did!" cried Laddie. "We have mirrors. That song can't be beaten. I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or disfigured. That was the pageant of summer passing in review. It represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed, garnering to come later. You buy corn and wheat, don't you? They are vastly necessary. Much more so than the settling of quarrels that never should have taken place. Do you think your daughter found the spectacle at all moving?"

"Damn you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.

But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.

"I prefer that you don't," said Laddie, "or on Ranger either. See how he likes being gentled."

Then he straightened and drew a deep breath.

"Mr. Pryor," he said, "as man to man, I have got this to say to you—and you may use your own discretion about repeating it to your daughter: I can offer her six feet of as sound manhood as you can find on God's footstool. I never in my whole life have had enough impure blood in my body to make even one tiny eruption on my skin. I never have been ill a day in my life. I never have touched a woman save as I lifted and cared for my mother, and hers, or my sisters. As to my family and education she can judge for herself. I offer her the first and only love of my heart. She objects to farming, because she says it is dirty, offensive work. There are parts of it that are dirty. Thank God, it only soils the body, and that can be washed. To delve and to dive into, and to study and to brood over the bigger half of the law business of any city is to steep your brain in, and smirch your soul with, such dirt as I would die before I'd make an occupation of touching. Will you kindly tell her that word for word, and that I asked you to?"

Mr. Pryor was standing before I saw him rise. He said those awful words again, but between them he cried: "You're right! It's the truth! It's the eternal truth!"

"It IS the truth," said Laddie. "I've only to visit the offices, and examine the business of those of my family living by law, to KNOW that it's the truth. Of course there's another side! There are times when there are great opportunities to do good; I recognize that. To some these may seem to overbalance that to which I object. If they do, all right. I am merely deciding for myself. Once and for all, for me it is land. It is born in me to love it, to handle it easily, to get the best results from stock. I am going to take the Merriweather place adjoining ours on the west, and yours on the south. I intend to lease it for ten years, with purchase privilege at the end, so that if I make of it what I plan, my work will not be lost to me. I had thought to fix up the place and begin farming. If Miss Pryor has any use whatever for me, and prefers stock, that is all right with me. I'll go into the same business she finds suitable for you. I can start in a small way and develop. I can afford a maid for her from the beginning, but I couldn't clothe her as she has been accustomed to being dressed, for some time. I would do my best, however. I know what store my mother sets by being well gowned. And as a husband, I can offer your daughter as loving consideration as woman ever received at the hands of man. Provided by some miracle I could win her consent, would you even consider me, and such an arrangement?"

"Frankly sir," said Mr. Pryor, "I have reached the place where I would be——" whenever you come to a long black line like that, it means that he just roared a lot of words father never said, and never will—"glad to! To tell the truth, the thing you choose to jestingly refer to as 'tinware'—I hope later to convince of the indelicacy of such allusion—would place you in England on a social level above any we ever occupied, or could hope to. Your education equals ours. You are a physical specimen to be reckoned with, and I believe what you say of yourself. There's something so clean and manly about you, it amounts to confirmation. A woman should set her own valuation on that; and the height of it should correspond with her knowledge of the world."

"Thank you!" said Laddie. "You are more than kind! more than generous!"

"As to the arrangements you could make for Pamela," said Mr. Pryor, "she's all we have. Everything goes to her, ultimately. She has her stipulated allowance now; whether in my house or yours, it would go with her. Surely you wouldn't be so callous as to object to our giving her anything that would please us!"

"Why should I?" asked Laddie. "That's only natural on your part. Your child is your child; no matter where or what it is, you expect to exercise a certain amount of loving care over it. My father and mother constantly send things to their children absent from home, and they take much pleasure in doing it. That is between you and your daughter, of course. I shouldn't think of interfering. But in the meantime, unless Miss Pryor has been converted to the beauties of plowing through my continuous performance of over a week, I stand now exactly where I did before, so far as she is concerned. If you and Mrs. Pryor have no objection to me, if you feel that you could think of me, or find for me any least part of a son's place in your hearts, I believe I should know how to appreciate it, and how to go to work to make myself worthy of it."

Mr. Pryor sat down so suddenly, the rail almost broke. I thought the truth was, that he had heart trouble, himself. He stopped up, choked on things, flopped around, and turned so white. I suppose he thought it was womanish, and a sign of weakness, and so he didn't tell, but I bet anything that he had it—bad!

"I'll try to make the little fool see!" he said.

"Gently, gently! You won't help me any in that mood," said Laddie. "The chances are that Miss Pryor repeated what she heard from you long ago, and what she knows you think and feel, unless you've changed recently."

"That's the amount of it!" cried Mr. Pryor. "All my life I've had a lot of beastly notions in my head about rank, and class, and here they don't amount to a damn! There's no place for them. Things are different. Your mother, a grand, good woman, opened my eyes to many things recently, and I get her viewpoint—clearly, and I agree with her, and with you, sir!—I agree with you!"

"I am more than glad," said Laddie. "You certainly make a friend at court. Thank you very much!"

"And you will come——?"

"The instant Miss Pryor gives me the slightest sign that I am wanted, and will be welcomed by her, I'll come like a Dakota blizzard! Flos can hump herself on time for once."

"But you won't come until she does?"

"Man alive! I can't!" cried Laddie. "Your daughter said positively exactly what she meant. It was unexpected and it hit me so hard I didn't try to argue. I simply took her at her word, her very explicit word."

"Fool!" cried Mr. Pryor. "The last thing on earth any woman ever wants or expects is for a man to take her at her word."

"What?" cried Laddie.

"She had what she said in her mind of course, but what she wanted was to be argued out of it! She wanted to be convinced!"

"I think not! She was entirely too convincing herself," said Laddie. "It's my guess that she has thought matters over, and that her mind is made up; but I would take it as a mighty big favour if you would put that little piece of special pleading squarely up to her. Will you?"

"Yes," said Mr. Pryor, "I will. I'll keep cool and do my best, but I am so unfortunate in my temper. I could manage slaves better than women. This time I'll be calm, and reason things out with her, or I'll blow out my brains."

"Don't you dare!" laughed Laddie. "You and I are going to get much pleasure, comfort and profit from this world, now that we have come to an understanding."

Mr. Pryor arose and held out his hand. Laddie grasped it tight, and they stood there looking straight at each other, while a lark on the fence post close by cried, "Spring o' ye-ar!" at them, over and over, but they never paid the least attention.

"You see," said Mr. Pryor, "I've been thinking things over deeply, deeply! ever since talking with your mother. I've cut myself off from going back to England, by sacrificing much of my property in hasty departure, if by any possibility I should ever want to return, and there is none, not the slightest! There's no danger of any one crossing the sea, and penetrating to this particular spot so far inland; we won't be molested! And lately—lately, despite the rawness, and the newness, there is something about the land that takes hold, after all. I should dislike leaving now! I found in watching some roots your mother gave me, that I wanted them to grow, that I very much hoped they would develop, and beautify our place with flowers, as yours is. I find myself watching them, watching them daily, and oftener, and there seems to be a sort of home feeling creeping around my heart. I wish Pamela would listen to reason! I wish she would marry you soon! I wish there would be little children. Nothing else on earth would come so close to comforting my wife, and me also. Nothing! Go ahead, lad, plow away! I'll put your special pleading up to the girl."

He clasped Laddie's hand, mounted and rode back to the gate he had entered when he came. Laddie sat on the rail, so I climbed down beside him. He put his arm around me.

"Do I feel any better?" he asked dubiously.

"Of course you do!" I said stoutly. "You feel whole heaps, and stacks, and piles better. You haven't got him to fight any more, or Mrs. Pryor. It's now only to convince the Princess about how it's all right to plow."

"Small matter, that!" said Laddie. "And easy! Just as simple and easy!"

"Have you asked the Fairies to help you?"

"Aye, aye, sir," said Laddie. "Also the winds, the flowers, the birds and the bees! I have asked everything on earth to help me except you, Little Sister. I wonder if I have been making a mistake there?"

"Are you mad at me, Laddie?"

"'Cause for why?"

"About the old crest thing!"

"Forget it!" laughed Laddie. "I have. And anyway, in the long run, I must be honest enough to admit that it may have helped. It seems to have had its influence with Mr. Pryor, no doubt it worked the same on Mrs. Pryor, and it may be that it was because she had so much more to bank on than she ever expected, that the Princess felt emboldened to make her demand. It may be, you can't tell! Anyway, it's very evident that it did no real harm. And forget my jesting, Chicken. A man can't always cry because there are tears in his heart. I think quite as much of that crest as you do. In the sum of human events, it is a big thing. No one admires a Crusader more than I. No one likes a good fight better. No Crusader ever put up a stiffer battle than I have in the past week while working in these fields. Every inch of them is battlefield, every furrow a separate conflict. Gaze upon the scene of my Waterloo! When June covers it with green, it will wave over the resting place of my slain heart!"

"Oh Laddie!" I sobbed. "There you go again! How can you?"

"Whoo-pee!" cried Laddie. "That's the question! How can I? Got to, Little Sister! There's no other way."

"No," I was forced to admit, "there isn't. What are we going to do now?"

"Life-saver, we'll now go to dinner," said Laddie. "Nothing except the partnership implied in 'we' sustains me now. YOU'LL FIND A WAY TO HELP ME OUT, WON'T YOU, LITTLE SISTER?"

"OF COURSE I WILL!" I promised, without ever stopping a minute to think what kind of a job that was going to be.

Did you ever wish with all your might that something would happen, and wait for it, expect it, and long for it, and nothing did, until it grew so bad, it seemed as if you had to go on another minute you couldn't bear it? Now I thought when Mr. Pryor talked to her, maybe she'd send for Laddie that very same night; but send nothing! She didn't even ride on our road any more. Of course her father had made a botch of it! Bet I could have told her Laddie's message straighter than he did. I could think it over, and see exactly how he'd do. He'd talk nicely about one minute, and the first word she said, that he didn't like, he'd be ranting, and using unsuitable words. Just as like as not he told her that he'd lay his whip across her shoulders, like he had Laddie. Any one could see that as long as she was his daughter, she might be slightly handy with whips herself; at least she wouldn't be likely to stand still and tell him to go ahead and beat her.

Sunday Laddie went to Lucy's. He said he was having a family reunion on the installment plan. Of course we laughed, but none of us missed the long look he sent toward Pryors' as he mounted to start in the opposite direction.

Everything went on. I didn't see how it could, but it did. It even got worse, for another letter came from Shelley that made matters concerning her no brighter, and while none of us talked about Laddie, all of us knew mighty well how we felt; and what was much worse, how he felt. Father and mother had quit worrying about God; especially father. He seemed to think that God and Laddie could be trusted to take care of the Princess, and I don't know exactly what mother thought. No doubt she saw she couldn't help herself, and so she decided it was useless to struggle.

The plowing on the west side was almost finished, and some of the seed was in. Laddie went straight ahead flower-trimmed and whistling until his face must have ached as badly as his heart. In spite of how hard he tried to laugh, and keep going, all of us could see that he fairly had to stick up his head and stretch his neck like the blue goose, to make the bites go down. And you couldn't help seeing the roundness and the colour go from his face, a little more every day. My! but being in love, when you couldn't have the one you loved, was the worst of all. I wore myself almost as thin as Laddie, hunting a Fairy to ask if she'd help me to make the Princess let Laddie go on and plow, when he was so crazy about it. I prayed beside my bed every night, until the Lord must have grown so tired He quit listening to me, for I talked right up as impressively as I knew how, and it didn't do the least bit of good. I hadn't tried the one big prayer toward the east yet; but I was just about to the place where I intended to do it soon.



CHAPTER XV

Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie

"O whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad."

Candace was baking the very first batch of rhubarb pies for the season and the odour was so tempting I couldn't keep away from the kitchen door. Now Candace was a splendid cook about chicken gizzards—the liver was always mother's—doughnuts and tarts, but I never really did believe she would cut into a fresh rhubarb pie, even for me. As I reached for the generous big piece I thought of Laddie poor Laddie, plowing away at his Crusader fight, and not a hint of victory. No one in the family liked rhubarb pie better than he did. I knew there was no use to ask for a plate.

"Wait—oh wait!" I cried.

I ran to the woodshed, pulled a shining new shingle from a bale stacked there, and held it for Candace. Then I slipped around the house softly. I didn't want to run any one's errands that morning. I laid the pie on the horseblock and climbed the catalpa carefully, so as not to frighten my robins. They were part father's too, because robins were his favourite birds; he said their song through and after rain was the sweetest music on earth, and mostly he was right; so they were not all my robins, but they were most mine after him; and I owned the tree. I hunted the biggest leaf I could see, and wiped it clean on my apron, although it was early for much dust. It covered the pie nicely, because it was the proper shape, and I held the stem with one hand to keep it in place.

If I had made that morning myself I couldn't have done better. It was sunny, spring air, but it was that cool, spicy kind that keeps you stopping every few minutes to see just how full you can suck your lungs without bursting. It seemed to wash right through and through and make you all over. The longer you breathed it the clearer your head became, and the better you felt, until you would be possessed to try and see if you really couldn't fly. I tried that last summer, and knocked myself into jelly. You'd think once would have been enough, but there I was going down the road with Laddie's pie, and wanting with all my heart to try again.

Sometimes I raced, but I was a little afraid the pie would shoot from the shingle and it was like pulling eye teeth to go fast that morning. I loved the soft warm dust, that was working up on the road. Spat! Spat! I brought down my bare feet, already scratched and turning brown, and laughed to myself at the velvety feel of it. There were little puddles yet, where May and I had "dipped and faded" last fall, and it was fun to wade them. The roadsides were covered with meadow grass and clover that had slipped through the fence. On slender green blades, in spot after spot, twinkled the delicate bloom of blue-eyed grass. Never in all this world was our Big Creek lovelier. It went slipping, and whispering, and lipping, and lapping over the stones, tugging at the rushes and grasses as it washed their feet; everything beside it was in masses of bloom, a blackbird was gleaming and preening on every stone, as it plumed after its bath. Oh there's no use to try—it was just SPRING when it couldn't possibly be any better.

But even spring couldn't hold me very long that morning, for you see my heart was almost sick about Laddie; and if he couldn't have the girl he wanted, at least I could do my best to comfort him with the pie. I was going along being very careful the more I thought about how he would like it, so I was not watching the road so far ahead as I usually did. I always kept a lookout for Paddy Ryan, Gypsies, or Whitmore's bull. When I came to an unusually level place, and took a long glance ahead, my heart turned right over and stopped still, and I looked long enough to be sure, and then right out loud some one said, "I'll DO something!" and as usual, I was the only one there.

For days I'd been in a ferment, like the vinegar barrel when the cider boils, or the yeast jar when it sets too close to the stove. To have Laddie and the Princess separated was dreadful, and knowing him as I did, I knew he never really would get over it. I had tried to help once, and what I had done started things going wrong; no wonder I was slow about deciding what to try next. That I was going to do something, I made up my mind the instant Laddie said he was not mad at me; that I was his partner, and asked me to help; but exactly WHAT would do any good, took careful thought.

Here was my chance coming right at me. She was far up the road, riding Maud like racing. I began to breathe after a while, like you always do, no matter how you are worked up, and with my brain whirling, I went slowly toward her. How would I manage to stop her? Or what could I say that would help Laddie? I was shaking, and that's the truth; but through and over it all, I was watching her too. I only wish you might have seen her that morning. Of course the morning was part of it. A morning like that would make a fence post better looking. Half a mile away you could see she was tipsy with spring as I was, or the song sparrows, or the crazy babbling old bobolinks on the stakes and riders. She made such a bright splash against the pink fence row, with her dark hair, flushed cheeks, and red lips, she took my breath. Father said she was the loveliest girl in three counties, and Laddie stretched that to the whole world. As she came closer, smash! through me went the thought that she looked precisely as Shelley had at Christmas time; and Shelley had been that way because she was in love with the Paget man. Now if the Princess was gleaming and flashing like that, for the same reason, there wasn't any one for her to love so far as I knew, except Laddie.

Then smash! came another thought. She HAD to love him! She couldn't help herself. She had all winter, all last summer, and no one but themselves knew how long before that, and where was there any other man like Laddie? Of course she loved him! Who so deserving of love? Who else had his dancing eyes of deep tender blue, cheeks so pink, teeth so white, such waving chestnut hair, and his height and breadth? There was no other man who could ride, swim, leap, and wrestle as he could. None who could sing the notes, do the queer sums with letters having little figures at the corners in the college books, read Latin as fast as English, and even the Greek Bible. Of course she loved him! Every one did! Others might plod and meander, Laddie walked the tired, old road that went out of sight over the hill, with as prideful a step as any king; his laugh was as merry as the song of the gladdest thrush, while his touch was so gentle that when mother was in dreadful pain I sometimes thought she would a little rather have him hold her than father.