"He gimme fifty cents!" was what the cherry-hat little girl said immediately, with some genius for steering conversation toward the things that interested her.

 

"You rich thing!" cried Miss Madeira, and then foolishly, and unnecessarily, inquired, "who is he?"

 

"Yo' sweetheart."

 

Miss Madeira lowered her voice in such a suggestive manner that when the little girl spoke again her voice was lowered, too.

 

"When did you see him?" asked Miss Madeira.

 

"See him ev' day. I cand go daown to Sowfoot by myse'f. He's sick." Miss Madeira looked quickly at some of the older members of the family in the waggon. They were a hill farm family from Sowfoot Crossing neighbourhood. "Yep, he's been sick,--with the malary simlike," was what the older members had to say upon the subject. Miss Madeira quickly left the subject and talked about the corn crop and the price of chickens for a little while, then presently went on down Main Street toward her father's bank, where her black horses were hitched.

 

Far down Main Street, in front of one of the frame houses that edged the street on either side, some children were enjoying a bonfire of dead leaves, front doors were opening and women were coming out to watch the fire; and, by their interest-lit eyes and by what they called to each other across the slumberous afternoon air, were showing that they were skilled in getting diversion out of smaller things than bonfires. It was the neighbourhood of Canaan's biggest and best. The doors that had opened had shown glimpses of the finest three-ply carpets in all Tigmore County, and though the women who had come out on the porches had grammatical peculiarities of their own, they were distinctly unapologetic and assured. You could easily imagine them laughing, with a consciousness of advantage, at the other grades of grammar and carpets in Canaan.

 

"Smells real good, don't it?" called one who was comfortable and portly, and who had her apron wrapped about her hands, "always makes me feel that spring's came when the rakin' and burnin' begin."

 

"Mrs. Pringle told me that they had some big fires aout toward the Ridge las' night. Burned the rakin' aout to Madeira Place. I missed that. D'you see it? I mighta seen it just as well's not from my back porch, tew!" shrilled another woman, in whose words a well-defined jealousy was patent, the jealousy of the person whose life is too small for her to afford to miss any of it.

 

"Yes, you oughta saw it," chimed in another. "Cert'n'y was no little-small flame. I could see Sally movin' araoun' in the flare. Had that tramp-boy taggin' abaout with her. I declare, if he di'n' look like a gipsy!"

 

The neighbourly throng was at this moment augmented by the appearance of two ladies who fluttered out on the porch of a rose-trellised cottage, like small, proud pouter pigeons. They were the Misses Marion, twin-sisters, quite inseparable, and, because their minds had run in exactly the same groove for all of their lives and because they were of about equal mental readiness, apt to get the same impression at exactly the same time, and apt to attempt expression in exactly the same breath.

 

Occasionally this was trying, both to the Misses Marion and to their hearers, and it was particularly trying when the two now called simultaneously from the rose-embowered porch to the women in the neighbouring yards:

 

"Have you heard----"

 

"Have you heard----"

 

Miss Shelley Marion turned to Miss Blair Marion with delicate courtesy: "Continue, sister," she said, just as Miss Blair said, "Sister, continue."

 

"Have we heard what, for goodness' sake?" snapped one of the would-be hearers, breaking in rawly upon the soft waves of the hand and the imploring taps with which each of the two gentlewomen was endeavouring to make way for the other.

 

"I continued last time, sister."

 

"I think not, Blair; I think I did. Proceed."

 

"Have you heard the news?" Miss Blair having yielded with great self-rebuke to Miss Shelley, the question gurgled liquidly from yard to yard, like a small twisting brook.

 

The two women whose yards adjoined the Misses Marions' yard came down to the separating fences and leaned their arms on the paling rails waitingly; the third woman moved up to the corner of her yard which was nearest the Misses Marion. She was the woman who had deplored missing the hill fires, and there was a resolute look on her face.

 

"Talk loud, Miss Blair," she said commandingly. But before Miss Blair could get her mouth open to talk at all there was the sound of horses' hoofs from up toward Court House Square, and a light vehicle, drawn by two powerful Kentucky blacks, rolled into view.

 

"Lawk, it's Sally Madeira!" cried Miss Blair impulsively, and then looked immediately convicted, for Miss Shelley had got only as far as "Lawk!"

 

When the slender equipage, with its spirited, long-tailed horses, and its high springy seat, with the erect young figure on it, had gone by, the women looked at each other, with pursed lips and knowing eyes.

 

"There, aint I been sayin'," cried the fat one, "she's a-lookin' peaked!"

 

Then somebody noticed that the Misses Marion were in the throes of another spasm of courtesy, and, reminded by that of the critical juncture where Miss Blair had left off a few minutes before, one of the women called to her:

 

"What news was that, Miss Blair? Say, you! Miss Blair! What news?"

 

"Why," said Miss Blair, having finally effected some sort of affectionate compromise with Miss Shelley, "why, these news,--they say that that N'York man is Sally Madeira's sweetheart, tew!"

 

"Lan' alive! I've heard that m'self!" said Mrs. Beasley, the wife of the Grange storekeeper. She had heard no such thing, but Mrs. Beasley was an idealist of no mean order, and she at once got a feeling about the matter that was little short of knowledge, and went on with headlong impetus, "I've heard that m'self. Yes, he's her sweetheart."

 

"The men up to the Grange said not, at first."

 

"Men never know."

 

 

Meantime, out beyond the town, Miss Madeira had circled around to the river road, and, coming up behind Madeira Place, passed it at a smart clip.

 

Farther along, the river road left the river to bend through Poetical on its little plateau, and the gait at which Miss Madeira went through Poetical was disturbing to the geese and hogs there. East of Poetical she got back to the river. It was very still along the Di. She could hear her own heart beating. Once it occurred to her that life would have been much simpler if she had gone to Europe the past fall, as Miss Elsie Gossamer had insisted upon her doing. Once she murmured, "It would be all right if he would only tell me,--I can't do anything until he tells me--what can a woman do until he tells her!" On ahead of her she could see a little shack perched up the bluff, and in front of the shack, on a log that served for a bench, a man sat, making something out of something. His hands were busy.

 

He got to his feet a little unsteadily as she came toward him. It seemed to him that there was a blue veil across his eyes, but he winked it away quickly enough, shook the ache out of his shoulders, put down the shoe-string that he was making out of a squirrel's skin, and stood in front of the shack waiting, with his hat in his hand. He had on a mud-stained corduroy hunting suit and big buckskin leggings, and there was a week's growth of beard on his face. He looked not unlike a highly civilised bear, and he felt his looks. She did not seem to see him until she was close upon him.

 

"Oh," she cried, "I was not expecting to find you here," and when that sounded a little bald, added quickly, "I heard that you were sick and I thought it likely that you were up in Canaan."

 

"Oh, no, I am not sick," he told her, hastening down to the trap, the delicious excitement that possessed him well restrained, "and since you have found me here, won't you get out and have some,--well, let me see,--some coffee and bacon? And I can make a lovely corn-dodger. Also I have some kind of good stuff in a can, though I can't get the can open. Do please stop and dine." Steering, sick, gaunt, gay, mocking at hardship, hope deferred and far-reaching disappointment, was at his best. Her eyes slipped away from his as he pressed his invitation. Then she laughed softly, with the little shake of her laughter when a notion appealed to her happily.

 

"I'm going to accept," she said, "I'll cook things and you can eat them."

 

"I'll make a sacred duty of my part," he promised gravely; he was lifting her from the buggy; her hands were on his shoulders; for a little delirious minute she was in his arms; he could not keep his hands from closing about her sweet body lingeringly as he lifted her; her eyes were looking into his, her face was coming down close to his; he had a wild fleeting hallucination that she----

 

&q............