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Show wSter prichard copyaioHT e& oooBLeoAy, tvGe 3 co. SYNOPSIS. 7 I prow 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. Plllig for me as a housekeeper, and announces the coming of a new boarder from New York, a nah-slck nah-slck young woman who needs the country air. I discover that Stella Goodwin will make a delightful companion and bellevj she ought not to return to the hot fcna dusty city for a long time. ; 5 J Barring the love-at-first-alght theory, do you believe a man t t and woman of Intelligence and self-restraint know when the be- t t ginning symptoms of love for J J one another come? Is It simply t t the blossoming of friendship or i Is It the awakening of desire t both . spiritual and physical de- J J sire? J CHAPTER VI Continued. "He will sing tomorrow." said I. "There is no opera on Thursdays." Her eyes twinkled once more. "Perhaps "Per-haps he has that terrible disease, 'sudden 'sud-den indisposition,' " she laughed. "Come, we must go home to supper. It will take me hours to get clean." Out in the open, she looked at her hands. "See, I've begun to get calluses, too!" she exclaimed, holding out ber palms proudly. "You've got blisters," said I. "No work for you tomorrow! Let me see." I touched her hand, as we paused beneath be-neath a blossoming apple tree, with the fragrance shedding about us. Our eyes ""set, too, as I did so. She drew her hand back gently, as the color came to her cheeks. We walked on In silence, as far as the pump. Mike had finished milking, and had gone home. The stable was closed. Inside we could hear the animals stamp. Suddenly I put my head under the pump spout, and asked her to work the handle. Laughing, Laugh-ing, she did so, and as I raised my dripping head I saw her standing with the low western sun full upon her. her eyes laughing into mine, her nose and Hps provocative, her plain blouse waist open at the throat so that I could see the gurgle of laughter rise. "Why did you do that?" she asked, arrested, perhaps, by something in my gaze. "Because," I answered, "there's a ghost lives in this well, and maybe with your aid I shall pump It out" "Don't you like the ghost?" she said. "Very much," said I, as we climbed the slope to Bert's. That evening Mrs. Bert sent her off to bed, and I tolled cheerfully at my manuscripts till the unholy hour of eleven. CHAPTER VII. Picking Paint and a Quarrel. The next morning at breakfast a burned nose confronted me across the table, and the possessor ruefully regarded re-garded her sore palms. "No work for you today," said I. "You will Just have to pick out colors for me. The painters are coming." I spoke as if we were old friends. I spoke as If it were the most natural thing in the world for a young woman to accompany a young man to his house and pick out paint for him. I . spoke, also, as if I had never cursed the prospect of petticoats that advise. So soon can one pair of eyes undo our prejudices, and so easily are the conventions con-ventions forgotten, in the natural life of the country at least by such persons per-sons as never were much bothered by them, anyhow! Evidently they had never greatly troubled Miss Goodwin, or she was not disposed to let them trouble her now, for ten minutes later we went down the road together, and found the painters paint-ers already unloading their wagon. The reliable Hard Cider, true to his word, had procured them for me, which, as I afterward have discovered, was something of a feat In Bentford, where promises are more common than fulfillment fulfill-ment "Now," said I, "I'm not going to paper pa-per any rooms if I can help it I want tbertUs calclmined. What color shall j it be?" I turned toward Miss Goodwin Good-win as I spoke. She shook her head. "I'm not going to say a word," she answered. "This Is your room." "I suppose you want the woodwork white?" the painter suggested. "These old mantels, for instance." "Cream white, not dead white," said I. "Walt a minute." I ran to the shed and brought back two more of my pictures. pic-tures. "Now," said 1, "the walls have got to net off both these pictures, and books besides. They've got to be neutral. I want a greenish, brownish, yellowish olive, with the old beam in the center of the celling in the same key, only a bit darker." The girl and the painter both laughed. "You are so definite," said she. "But I want an Indefinite tint," I replied. Again she laughed, though the painter paint-er looked puzzled. "I'll get my colors," he said. He mixed an olive tint, laid a streak of it on the plaster, and something emerged which looked right to me. We went into the little ball, where the front door stood open, and we I Found Myself Wishing Miss Goodwin Good-win Were There. could see Hard on a ladder mending the beautiful carved doorcap outside. "This ball the same color," said I, "with the rails of the baluster In the cream white of the trim." We went Into the northeast room and the dining room behind it "Same color here?" asked the painter. I was about to answer yes, when Miss Goodwin spoke. "I should think you'd want these rooms lighter In color," she said, "as they face the north." "The lady's right," said the painter. "They always are," I smiled. "You two fix up the color for this room, then. We can decide on the other rooms after these downstairs are done." . "No," cried the girl, "I won't do anything any-thing of the kind! You might not like what I picked." "Incredible!" said I. "I've really got to get to work outside now." And I ran off, leaving her looking a little angrily, I thought, after me. I was so Impatient to see how my lawn was going to look that I went to the shed to hunt up a dummy sundial post. In a loft under the eaves I saw the dusty end of what looked like a Doric pillar poking out I dragged the heavy column down, sawed off the upper up-per four feet carefully, and took my pedestal around to the lawn. Midway between the trellis and where the edge of my pergola was to be I placed the pillar. Then I took out my knife and thrust the blade lightly In at an angle, to simulate the dial marker, and turned to call Miss Goodwin. But Bbe was already standing In the door. "Oh!" she cried, running lightly down the plank and across the ground, "a sundial already, and a real pedestal! Come away from It a little, and see how It seems to focus all the sunlight. We stood off near the house, and looked at the white column In mid-lawn. mid-lawn. It did Indeed seem to draw in the sunlight to this level spot before the dwelling, even though It rose from the brown earth instead of rich greensward, green-sward, and even though beyond It was but the unsightly, half-finished, naked trellis. Even as we watched, a bird came swooping across the lawn, alighted alight-ed on my knife handle, and began to carol. "Oh, the darling!" cried Miss Goodwin. Good-win. "He understands!" I was very well content I had unexpectedly un-expectedly found a pedestal, and was experiencing for the first time the real sensation of garden warmth and intimacy inti-macy and focused light which a sundial, sun-dial, rightly placed, can bring. I did not speak, and presently beside me I heard a voice saying, "But I forgot that I am angry at you." "Why?" I asked. "Because you had no right to leave me to pick out the paint for your dining din-ing room," said she. "Why not?" said I. "You picked out the name of my house and the stji? of the rose trellis." "That was different" she replied. "I don't see why." "Then you are extremely stupid," she answered. "Doubtless," said I. "But that doesn't help me any to understand, you know." "Come," she replied, "and see If the paint suits you. Then I must go home and write some letters." I went back to my sundial, between two rows of cauliflower plants Bert bad given to me, and which Mike had set out thus early for an experiment between threads of sprouting radishes, lines 'of onion sets, and other succulent evidence J of the season to come. As I marked out the beds around the pedes tal, I found myself wishing Miss Goodwin Good-win were there to advise me. By then the hour was nearly twelve-, and consequently too late to spade it under, so I plodded up the road to dinner. As I passed my potato field, I saw rows of green shoots above the ground, and out under my lone pine I saw a figure, sitting in the shadow on the stone wall. I climbed through the brambles over the wall, and walked down the aisles of potatoes toward her. "It Is time for dinner," I said meekly. She looked up. "Is It? I have been listening to the old pine talk." "What was he saying?" I asked. "Things you wouldn't understand," said she. "About words in 'hy'?" She shook her head. "Not at all; nothing quite so stupid but nearly as saddening." She rose to her feet and her eyes looked into mine, enigmatically enigmatical-ly wistful. I "I missed you after you went awar from Twin Fires," said I suddenly. "I don't know whether I got the sundial beds right or not. Won't you please come back to tell me? Or am I stupid again, and mustn't you advise me about that?" Her eyes twinkled a little. "You are still very stupid," she said, "but perhaps per-haps I will consent to give my Invaluable Invalu-able advice on this Important subject." "Good!" I cried. "And we'll build some more trellis If your bands are better." bet-ter." "My hands are all right," she said, with the faintest emphasis on the noun, which made a variety of perplexing Interpretations In-terpretations possible and kept me silent as I helped her over the wall Into In-to Bert's great cauliflower field, and we tramped through the soft soil toward the house. CHAPTER VIII. I Write a Sonnet. After dinner she approved the sundial sun-dial beds with a mock-judicial gravity, and then she went at the trellis, working work-ing with a kind of impersonal nervous intensity that troubled me, I didn't quite know why. She said, with a brief laugh, It was because she had suggested the structure, and she could never rest till any job she bad undertaken under-taken was completed. "You live too hard," said I. "Thai's the trouble with most of us nowadays. We are overclvlllzed. We don't know how to take things easy, because we have the vague idea of so many other things to be done always crowding across the threshold of our consciousness." conscious-ness." "Perhaps," she answered. "The 'J words, for Instance, If they get 'I' done before my return. Thank heaven, 'T hasn't contributed so many words to science as 'Hy'!" "Forget the dictionary!" I cried. "You are going to stay here a long time till these roses bloom, or at any rate till the sundial beds have come to flower. Besides, there'll be a lot of things about my house where your advice ad-vice cannot be spared." She darted a quick look at me, and turned back to the trellis, when she was nailing on strips. Sh did not speak, and when I camt over to face her, with a post for the next arch, I saw that hei half away, blinking her eyelids hard, bit her lip, then picked up the level and set it with a smack against the post I put my hand over bers both out hands were dirty! and said, "Whai Is the matter? Are you tired?" "Please, please level this post" sh replied. "Are you tired?" "No, I'm not tired. I'm a fool. Come we must finish the arch!" ' Is it time for the hero to pro- J ' pose? Is Stella playing a lit- t tie game to awaken his sym- J pathy and lead him on to the ' i entanglements of love? t (TO BE CONTINUED.) |