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Show LTER PRICHAI3) mTON copyaioHT o pooetecwy. cage O co. SYNOPSIS. I -s- ; I grow tired of my work as a college Instructor and buy a New England farm on sight I Inspect my farm and go to board at Bert Temple's. Bert helps me to hire a carpenter and a farmer. Hard Cider, the carpenter, estimates the repairs and changes necessary on the house. Mike commences plowing. I start to prune the orchard tree. Hard Cider' builds bookcases book-cases around the twin fireplaces. Mrs. Temple hires Mrs. Pillig for me as a housekeeper, and announces the coming of a new boarder from New York, a half-Blck half-Blck young woman who needs the country air. I discover that Stella Goodwin will make a delightful companion and believe she ought not to return to the hot and dusty city for a long time. I squeeze her hand slyly i ....... - . . - - - t The comfort of a rainy day f ! can you imagine anything pleas- ? t anter, after weeks of glaring j sunshine, than to enjoy the glow of an open wood fire In a big, i t hospitable sitting room while I I a cold gray rain takes the edge i off things outside? Especially j if the girl you're falling In J love with is playing the piano ! to help make you happy? J CHAPTER VIII Continued. "1 guess we won't do any more arches today," I replied, "or you won't, at any rate. You'll go home and rest" She looked at me an instant with Just the hint of her twinkle coming back. "I'm so unused to taking orders," or-ders," she said, "that I've lost the art of obedience. Move the post a little to the right, please." I did so, and we worked on In silence. si-lence. We had built the wide central arch by the time the sun began to drop down into our faces. There were only five arches more to build. "I shall write tonight and have the roses hurried along," said I. We walked back toward the house and looked over the lawn, past the sundial, sun-dial, and saw the farm through the trellis, and beyond the farm the trees at the edge of my clearing, and then a distant roof or two, and the far hills. The apple blossoms were fragrant In the orchard. The'' persistent song sparrows spar-rows were singing. The shadow of the dial post stretched far out toward the east "It is pointing toward the brook." said I. "Shall we go and ask the thrush to sing?" She shook her head. "Not tonight" she said briefly, and I walked, grieved and puzzling, up the road by ' ber side. The next day she pleaded a headache, head-ache, and I went to the farm alone. "It will be you who will need a rest soon," she said the second morning, as she came down to breakfast and found me hard at work out on the front porch. "I'm going to take one with you.1" said L "I want to see the country, too." She smiled a little, and picked a lilac bud, holding It to her nose. She seemed quite far away now. The first few days of our rapid intimacy had passed, and now she was as much a stranger to me as on the first meeting in the pines. I said nothing about hei coming to the farm; I don't know why. Somehow, I was piqued. I wished her to make the first move. In some wav. it was all due to my asking her to choose the paint for my dining room, and that seemed to me ridiculous. There was no sun to wake me in the morning, so that I slept till half-past six. Outside the rain was pouring steadily down, and I found Bert rejoicing, re-joicing, for it was badly needed. After breakfast I waylaid Miss Goodwin. "No work on the trellis today," said I, swallowing my pique; "so I'm going to fix up the south room. I'm going to make twin fires out of some of the nice, fragrant apple wood you haven't sawed for me, and hang the Hlroshiges, and unpack the books, and have an elegant ele-gant time if you don't make me do it alone." The girl shot a look around Mrs. Bert's sitting room, where a small owl stood on the mantel under a glass case and a transparent pink muslin sack filled with burst milkweed pods was draped over a crayon portrait of Bert as a young man. I followed her glance and then our eyes met "Just the same, they are dear, good souls," she smiled. "Of course," I answered. "But to sit here on a cold, rainy dayl Ton may read by the fire while I work. Only please come!" "May I read "The Foundation of the Nineteenth Century,' Doctor Upton?" she said. "You may read the dictionary, if you wish," I replied. She went to get her raincoat It was cold out of doors, and the rain drove in our faces as we splashed down the road. The painters had made a fire in the kitchen range, and as we stepped in the warmth greeted us in a curious, friendly way. I brought several logs of dead apple wood into the big room and soon had the twin hearths cheerful cheer-ful with dancing flames. Then I went back to the shed, and brought the two cushions which had been on my window-seats at college, to place them on the settle. But as I came into the room, instead of finding the girl waiting wait-ing to sit by the fire, I saw her with sleeves rolled up washing the west window. Her body was outlined against the light, her hair making an aura about her head. As she turned a little, I caught the saucy grace of her profile. She was so intent upon her task that she had not heard me enter, and I paused a full moment watching her. Then I dropped the cushions and cried, "Come, here's your seatl That is no task for a Ph.D." "I don't want a seat" she laughed. "I'm having a grand time, and don't care to have my erudition thrown in my face. I love to wash windows." "But 'The Foundations of the Nineteenth Nine-teenth Century'?" said I. "The whole nineteenth century Is on these windows," she replied. "I've got to scrub here to get at Its foundations." "But you'll get tired again," I laughed, though with real solicitude. "I didn't want you to come to work only to be company." "I don't know how to be company. Please get me some fresh hot water." My piano, which had stood In the dining room ever Blnce the furniture had arrived, we unboxed, wheeled In to fill the space between the small east windows, and took the covers off. I looked around Already the place was assuming a homelike air, and the She Was Seated Upon It When I Arrived. long room had contracted Into Intimacy. Inti-macy. The girl dropped her rag into the pail, and stood looking about "Oh, the nice room!" she cried. "And oh. the dirty piano!" I went out to begin on the books, and when I returned I brought the piano bench, as well. The girl was busy with the east window, and I set the bench down In silence. She was seated upon it, when I arrived with the third load, and through the house were dancing the sounds of a Bach gavotte. She stopped playing as I entered, and looked up with a little smile of apology. "Please go on!" I cried. She wheeled back and let her hands fall on the keys, rippling by a natural suggestion into the old tune "Amaryllis." "Amaryl-lis." The logs were crackling. The gay old measures flooded the room with sound. My head nodded in time, as I stacked the books on the shelves. Suddenly the music stopped, and with a rustle of skirts the girl was beside me. She began to Inspect titles, pulling out books here, substituting others there, carrying some to other cases. I wheeled in load after load. "lord," I cried, "of the making of many books, et cetera! I'll never buy another one, or else I'll never move again." "You'll never move again, you mean," said she. "Look, all the nice poetry by the west fireplace. Don't the green Globe editions look pretty In the white cases? And Keats right by the chim ney. Please, may I put the garden books, and old Mr. Thoreau, by the east fire?" "Give old Mr. Thoreau any seat he wants," said I, "only Mr. Emerson must sit beside him." "Where's Mr. Emerson? Oh, yes, here he Is, in a blue suit Here, we'll plant the rose of beauty on the brow ' of chaos!" She took the set of Emerson and placed it in the top shelf by the east fireplace, above a tumbled heap of unassorted un-assorted volumes, standing back to survey sur-vey It with her gurgling laugh. "What Is so decorative as books?" she cried. "They beat pictures or wall paper. Oh. the nice room, the nice books, nice old Mr. Emerson, nice twin fires!" "And nice librarian," I added. She darted a look at me, laughed with heightened color, and herself added, with a glance at her wrist watch, "and nice dinner!" I brought back some of my manuscripts manu-scripts after dinner, in case the room should be completed before supper time. We attacked it again with enthusiasm, en-thusiasm, hers being no less, apparently, appar-ently, than mine, for it was Indeed wonderful to see the place emerge from bareness Into the most alluring charm as the books filled the shelves, as my two Morris chairs were placed before the fires, as my three or four treasured rugs were unrolled on the rather uneven but charmingly old floor which Just fitted the old, rugged hearthstones, and finally as the two bright Hiroshlges were placed In the center of the two white wood panels over the fireplaces, and the other pictures pic-tures hung over the bookcases. "I think it is wonderful," said I. "I have my home at last! And how you have helped me!" "Yes, you have your home," said she. "Oh, It is such a nice one!" She turned away, and went over to the east fire, poking it with her toe. I lit my pipe, sat down at my old, familiar fa-miliar desk, heaved a great sigh of comfort, and opened a manuscript "It's only four o'clock," said I. "I can get in that hour I wasted in sleep this morning. Can you find something to read?" "I ought to," she smiled. I plunged Into the manuscript a silly novel. I read on, vaguely aware that the west was breaking, and the room growing warm. Presently I heard a window opened and felt the cooler rush of rain-freshened air from the fragrant orchard. Then I heard the painters come downstairs, talking, and tramp out through the kitchen. It was five o'clock. But I still read on, to finish fin-ish a chapter. The painters had departed. de-parted. The entire house was still. Suddenly there stole through the room the soft andante theme of a Mozart Mo-zart sonata, and the low sun at almost the same instant dropped into the clear blue hole in the west and flooded the room. I let the manuscript fall, and sat listening peacefully for a full minute. Then I moved across the floor and stood behind the player. How cheerful the room looked, how booky and old-fashioned! It seemed as if I had always dwelt there. How easy it would be to put out my hands and rest them on her shoulders, and lay my cheek to her hair! The impulse was ridiculously strong to do so, and I tingled to my finger tips with a strange excitement "Come," I said, "it is after five, and the sun is out We will go to hear the thrush." The girl faced around on the bench, raising her face to mine. "Yes, let us," she answered. "How lovely the room looks now. Oh, the nice new old room!" She lingered In the doorway a second, sec-ond, and then we stepped out of the front entrance, where we stood entranced en-tranced by the freshness of the rain-washed rain-washed world In the low light of after- noon, and the heavy fragrance of Wet ' lilac buds enveloped us. Then the girl gathered her skirts up and we went down through the orchard, where the ground was strewn with the fallen petals, through the maples where the 6ong sparrow was singing, and in among the dripping pines. The brook was whispering secret things, and the drip from the trees made a soft tinkle. Just detectable, on its pools. We waited one minute, two minutes, min-utes, three minutes in silence, and then the fairy clarion sounded, the "cool bars of melody from the everlasting evening." It sounded with a thrilling nearness, so lovely that It almost hurt and Instinctively I put out my hand and felt for hers. She yielded it and so we stood, hand in hand, while the thrush sang once, twice, three times, now near, now farther away, and then it seemed from the very edge of my clearing. I still held her hand, as we waited for another burst of melody. But he evidently did not intend to sing again. My fingers closed tighter over hers as I felt her face turn toward mine, and she answered their pressure while her eyes glistened, I thought with tears. Then her hand slipped away. "Don't speak," she said, leading the way out of the grove. We went into the house again to make sure that the fires had burned down. The room was darker now, filled with twilight shadows. The last of the logs were glowing red on the hearths, and the air was hot and heavy aftei the fresh outdoors. But how cheerful, how friendly, how like a human thing, with human feelings of warmth and welcome, the room seemed to met "It has been a wonderful day," said I, as we turned from the fires to pass out "I wonder If I shall ever have so much Joy again In my house?" The girl at my side did not answer. I looked at her, and saw that she was struggling with tears. I did instinctively the only thing my clumsy Ignorance could suggest pul my hand upon hers. She withdrew il quickly. "No, no!" she cried under her breath. "Oh, I am such a fool! Fool middle English fool, fole, fol; Icelandic, fol: old French fol always the same word !" She broke into a plaintive little laugh, ran through the hall and lifted the stove lid to see if the fire there waa out and hastened to the road, where I had difficulty to keep pace with her as we walked up the slope to supper. "You need a rest more than, you think, I guess," I tried to say, but she only answered, "I need it less!" and made off at once to her room. Thai night I didn't go back to my house to work. I didn't work at all. I looked out of my window at a young moon for a long while, and then yes, I confess con-fess It though I was thirty years old, I wrote a sonnet! I Why Is It that a big, strapping t f man wants to write poetry when f .he falls in love? This seems to j J be one of the early symptoms of t the "disease." J (TO BE CONTINUED.) Not Creatures of the Sea. The National museum at Washington, Washing-ton, contains a notable display of the bones of several species of extinct mammals which, if seen alive in the ocean, would be called huge sea serpents. ser-pents. They were carnivorous and their long, slender Jawa were armed with formidable teeth. Although a few remaining individuals of the group may have given actual basis for the sea-serpent stories, these extinct animals ani-mals were not reptiles, but mammals which, like the whale and seal and otter, ot-ter, had happened to evolve- in an aquatic environment |