THE week passed so quickly, with our hay-making and our getting over our hay-making and our pleasant walks—we did not attempt to drive out again behind “th’ ould scut”,—and the attractive meals that Minerva cooked and the pleasant music that Cherry found within the piano, that when Friday came, and Cherry asked me if I had found a team to carry her down, Ethel said,

“It’s all nonsense, your thinking of going back. Philip, she says that she hasn’t made any plans at all, beyond thinking of going to Bar Harbor in September to visit her aunt.”

“Well, then, Cherry, it will be downright unkind in you to ask me to hunt up a team yet awhile. Just stay on until the haying season is over, and we can go down behind a real horse.”

“Well, of course I’m having a perfectly delicious time,” said Cherry, putting her arms around Ethel’s shoulders affectionately, “and I’d much rather stay than go, but it seems like—”

“It doesn’t seem like anything at all,” said Ethel, “except that we want you to stay. And, besides, we want you to meet Ellery Sibthorp.”

“Ellery Sibthorp,” said Cherry with a laugh. “Is that his real name?”

“That’s his real name, the one he writes under, and Philip asked me to ask him up. He’s all alone in the world and is struggling to make a name for himself.”

“Mercy, I should think he had one ready made. Ellery Sibthorp. It’s as valuable as Rudyard Kipling.”

“Wait till you see him,” said I. “He’s poor as a church mouse and as clean as a whistle, and as good as gold.”

“Oh, I’m simply dying to see him. When does he come? And how will you get him up?”

“Egerton livery, this time. And he’s coming Monday. So you see, if you were to go to-morrow, you wouldn’t see him.”

“Tell me something about him. Of course I’ll stay. How old is he? Is he married?”

“Oh, no. I guess he’s about twenty-eight, and he’s one of the great unrecognized. Good, but different, so he’s got to wait.”

“Hasn’t he had anything accepted?”

“Oh, a few things, but not enough to make him hopeless of success.”

“Oh, is he that type?”

“A little. If he finally takes the world by storm, he won’t be among those who are surprised.”

“And what do you think of him?”

“I? Oh, I think he’s young and can afford to wait, but I guess he’s one of the real ones. It won’t do him any harm to wait.”

“That always sounds so merciless,” said Ethel. She and Cherry were sitting on a settee under a maple. She turned to her friend. “Half the time he lives on next to nothing, and yet Philip says that it will do him no harm to wait. He may starve before the world finds him out.”

“Even if he does, he’ll be the happier in the world to come,” said I. “But don’t look for a sad-eyed, posing, long-haired, hollow-cheeked poet. Sibthorp sticks to prose, and he has a sense of humour that keeps him sane and satisfied and hopeful. I really think that if he were to be tremendously successful now that life would lose something of its savour. He feels in a vague way that he belongs to the line of those who have had to toil and wait before recognition came, and the thought is not distasteful.”

“Will he read to us, or will he be like you, and never read anything of his own?”

“Oh, he’ll read, if you press him—”

Just then we heard moans that we had supposed were never to be heard again, and Minerva came running out of the house.

“Oh, Mist. Vernon, Miss Pussy has fell down the well.”

“Not really?” said Ethel, jumping up from the settee. “Oh, Philip, you must get her out at once. We never can drink the water again.”

“Are you sure she’s there, Minerva?”

“’Deed I am. I had the top off to fix that chain that got unhooked agin, an’ she must have jumped up awn the edge and then fell in. She’ll be drowned, sure.”

“Where’s James?” said I, hurrying through the house.

“He’s gone home.”

“Well, you go get him. I’ll fish for the cat, but he’d be more likely to get her if he went down. Hurry!”

Our drinking water was pumped out of the well, that was under the kitchen, by means of an endless chain furnished with rubber buckets, and while the well was some thirty feet deep, it would not be much of a job for a man used to it to go down and rescue the cat, supposing that its nine lives held out until he came. I did not think of going down, because I cannot swim, and a single false step would have meant dro............