"So you refused Weston's offer of three hundred dollars for Frieda?"

"Yes, father. Do you think I was wrong?"

"Well, I don't know. That's a good deal of money, Austin."

"I know, but think what she cost to import, and the record she's making! I told him he might have two of the brand-new bull calves at seventy-five apiece."

"What did he say?"

"Jumped at the chance. He's coming for the calves, and with the cash early to-morrow morning. I said he might have a look at Dorothy, too. Peter thinks she isn't quite up to our standard, and I'm inclined to agree with him, though I imagine his opinion is based partly on the fact that she's a Jersey! If Weston will give three hundred for her, right on the spot, I think we'd better let her go."

"Did you do any other special business in Wallacetown?"

"I took ten dozen more eggs to Hassan's Grocery, and he paid me for the last two months. Thirty dollars. Pretty good, but we ought to do better yet, though, of course, we eat a great many ourselves. How's the tax assessing coming along? I suppose you've been out all day, too."

"Yes. I'm so green at it I find it rather hard work. It's hard luck that both of the listers should be sick just now, though in New Hampshire the selectmen always have to do the assessing. But I've had some funny experiences to-day. I found one woman terribly distressed because her husband wasn't at home. 'He waited 'round all yesterday afternoon for you, thinkin' you'd probably be here,' she said, 'but he's gone to White Water to-day.' 'Well,' I said, 'let's see if we can't get along just as well without him. Have you a horse?' 'Yes, but he's over age—he can't be taxed.' 'Any cows?' 'Just two heifers—they're too young.' 'Any money on deposit?' 'Lord, no!' 'Then there's only the poll-tax?' I suggested. 'Bless you, he's seventy-six years old—there ain't no poll-tax!' she rejoined. And the long and short of it was that they weren't taxable for a single thing!"

Austin laughed. "How much longer are you going to be at this, father?" he asked, as he turned to go away.

"All through April, I'm afraid. I'm sorry it makes things so much harder for you on the farm, Austin, but it means three dollars a day. I'm so glad Katherine and Edith could go on the high school trip to Washington—your mother had her first letter this noon. You'll want to read it—they're having a wonderful time. I'm trying to figure out whether we can possibly let Katherine go to Wellesley next year. She's got her heart just set on it, and Edith seems perfectly willing to stay at home, so we shan't be put to any extra expense for her."

"I guess when the time comes we can find a way to help Katherine if she helps herself as much as Thomas and Molly are doing. By the way, has it occurred to you that there may be some reason for Edith's sudden turn towards domesticity?"

"Why, no—what do you mean?"

"Peter."

"Peter!" echoed Mr. Gray, aghast; "why the child isn't seventeen yet, and he can't be more than a couple of years older!"

"I know. But such things do sometimes happen."

"You don't consider Peter a suitable match for one of your sisters?" went on the horrified father; "why, she's oceans above him."

"Any farther than Sylvia is above Thomas? You seem to be taking that rather hard."

For Thomas, in spite of Austin's warnings, and his chastening experience on the night of the expedition to the Moving-Picture Palace, had broken bounds again and openly declared himself. Sylvia, who already reproached herself for her ill-temper on that occasion, was very kind and very sweet, and had the tact and wisdom not to treat the matter as a joke; but she was as definite and firm in her "no" as she was considerate in the way she put it. Thomas was as usual quite unable to conceal his feelings, and his parents were grieving for him almost as much as he was for himself, although they had never expected any other outcome to his first love-affair, and were somewhat amazed at his presumption.

"You never thought of this yourself," went on the bewildered parent, ignoring Austin's last remark, feeling that his children were treating him most unfairly by indulging in so many affairs of the heart which could not possibly have a fortunate outcome. "I haven't noticed a thing, and I'm sure your mother hasn't, or she would have spoken about it to me. Why, Edith's hardly out of her cradle."

"It would take a pretty flexible cradle to hold Edith nowadays," returned Austin dryly; "she's running around all over the countryside, and she has more partners at a dance than all the other girls put together. She isn't as nice as Molly, or half so interesting as Katherine, but she has a little way with her that—well, I don't know just what it is, but I see the attraction myself. I thought I'd tell you so that if you didn't like it, we could try to scrimp a little harder, and send her off for a year or so, too—she never could get into college, but she might go to some school of Domestic Science. No—I didn't notice Peter's state of mind myself at first."

"Sylvia!" said his father sharply. "She didn't approve, of course."

"On the contrary, very highly. She says that the sooner a girl of Edith's type is married—to the right sort of a man, of course—the better, and I'm inclined to think that she's right. Then she pointed out that Peter had gone doggedly to school all winter, struggling with a foreign language, and enduring the gibes he gets from being in a class with boys much younger than himself, with very good grace. She mentioned how faithful and competent he was in his work, and how interested in it; asked if I had noticed the excellency of his handwriting, his accounts—and his manners! And finally she said that a boy who would promise his mother to go to church once a fortnight at least, and keep the promise, was doing pretty well."

"Speaking of church," said Mr. Gray uneasily, as if forced to agree with all Austin said, yet anxious to change the subject, "Mr. Jessup is calling. He comes pretty frequently."

"Yes—I had noticed that for myself! I don't think Sylvia particularly likes it."

"Then I imagine she can stop it without much outside help," said his father, somewhat ruefully. "Well, we must get to work, and not sit here talking all the rest of the afternoon—not that there's so very much afternoon left! What are you going to do next, Austin?"

"Change my clothes, and then start burning the rubbish-pile—there's a good moon, so I can finish it after the milking's done."

"That means you'll be up until midnight—and you were out in the barn at five!" exclaimed Mr. Gray. "I don't see where you get all your energy."

"From ambition!" laughed Austin, starting away. "This is going to be the finest farm in the county again, if I have anything to do about it." As he entered the house, and went through the hall, he could hear voices in Sylvia's parlor, and though the door was ajar, he went past it, contrary to his custom. His father was right. If she did not like the minister's visits, she was quite competent to stop them without outside help. Was it possible—could it be?—that she did like them? He flung off his business clothes and got into his overalls with a sort of savage haste—after all, what difference ought it to make to him whether she liked them or not? She was going away almost immediately, would inevitably marry some one before very long, Mr. Jessup at least held a dignified position and possessed a good education, and if she married him, she would come back to Hamstead, they could see her once in a while—Having tried to comfort himself with these cheering reflections, he started down the stairs, inwardly cursing. Then he heard something which made him stop short.

"Please go away," Sylvia was saying, in the low, penetrating voice he knew so well, "and I think it would be better if you didn't come any more. How dare you speak to me like that! And how can a clergyman so lose his sense of dignity as to behave like any common fortune-hunter?"

Austin pushed open the door without stopping to knock, and walked in.

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Jessup," he said coolly, "my father told me we were having the pleasure of a call from you. I'm just going out to milk—won't you come with me, and see the cattle? They're really a fine sight, tied up ready for the night."

Mr. Jessup picked up his hat, and Austin held the door open for him to pass out, leaving Sylvia standing, an erect, scornful little black figure, with very red cheeks, her angry eyes growing rapidly soft as she looked straight past the minister at Austin.

The results of Mr. Jessup's visit were several. The most immediate one was that Austin's work was so delayed by the interruption it received that it was nearly nine o'clock before he was able to start his bonfire. Thomas joined him, but after an hour declared he was too sleepy to work another minute, and strolled off to bed. Austin's next visitor was his father, who merely came to see how things were getting along and to say good-night. And finally, when he had settled down to a period of laborious solitude, he was amazed to see Sylvia open and shut the front door very quietly, and come towards him in the moonlight, carrying a white bundle so large that she could hardly manage it.

"For Heaven's sake!" he exclaimed, hurrying to help her, "you ought to have been asleep hours ago! What have you got here?"

"Something to add to your bonfire," she said savagely, and as he took the great package from her, the white wrapping fell open, showing the contents to be inky black. "All the crepe I own! I won't wear it another day! I've been respectful to death—even if I couldn't be to the dead—and to convention long enough. I've swathed myself in that stuff for nearly fifteen months! I won't be such a hypocrite as to wear it another day! And if Thomas—and—and—Mr. Jessup and—and everybody—are going to pester the life out of me, I might just as well be in New York as here. I'm glad I'm going away."

"No one else is going to pester you," said Austin quietly, "and they won't any more. But you'll have a good time in New York—I think it's fine that you're going." He tossed the bundle into the very midst of the burning pile, and tried to speak lightly, pretending not to notice the excitement of her manner and the undried tears on her flushed cheeks. "I think you're just right about that stuff, too. Will this mean all sorts of fluffy pink and blue things, like what Flora Little wears? I should think you would look great in them!"

"No—but it means lots and lots of pure white dresses and plain black suits and hats, without any crepe. Then in the fall, lavender, and gray, and so on."

"I see—a gradual improvement. Won't you sit down a few minutes? It's a wonderful night."

"Thank you. Austin—you and Sally will have to help me shop when I get to
New York—Heaven knows what I can wear to travel down in."

Austin stopped raking, and flung himself down on the grass beside her.
"Sylvia," he said quickly, "I'm awfully sorry, but I can't go."

"Can't go! Why not?" she exclaimed, with so much disappointment in her voice that he was amazed.

"Father's a selectman now, you know, and away all day just at this time on town business. There's too much farmwork for Thomas and Peter to manage alone. I didn't foresee this, of course, when I accepted your uncle's invitation. I can't tell you how much it means to me to give it up, but you must see that I've got to."

"Yes, I see," she said gravely, and sat silently for some minutes, fingering the frill on her sleeve. Then she went on: "Uncle Mat wants me to stay a month or six weeks with him, and I think I ought to, after. deserting him for so long. When I come back, my own little house will be ready for me, and it will be warm enough for me to move in there, so I think these last few days will be 'good-bye.' Your family has let me stay a year—the happiest year of all my life—and I know your mother loves me—almost as much as I love her—and hates to have me go. But all families are better off by themselves, and in one way I think I've stayed too long already."

"You mean Thomas?"

She nodded, her eyes full of tears. "I ought to have gone before it happened," she said penitently; "any woman with a grain of sense can usually see that—that sort of thing coming, and ward it off beforehand. But I didn't think he was quite so serious, or expect it quite so soon."

"The young donkey! To annoy you so!"

"Annoy me! Surely you don't think Thomas was thinking of the money?"

"Good Lord, no, it never entered his head! Neither did it enter his head what an unpardonable piece of presumption it was on his part to ask you to marry him. A great, ignorant, overgrown, farmer boy!"

"You are mistaken," said Sylvia quietly; "I do not love Thomas, but if I did, the answer would have had to be 'no' just the same. The presumption would be all on my part, if I allowed any clean, wholesome, honest boy, in a moment of passion, to throw away his life on a woman like me. Thomas must marry a girl, as fresh as he is himself—not a woman with a past like mine behind her."

For nearly a year Austin had exercised a good deal of self-control for a man little trained in that valuable quality. At Sylvia's speech it gave way suddenly, and without warning. Entirely forgetting his resolution never to touch her, he leaned forward, seizing her arm, and speaking vehemently.

"I wish you would get rid of your false, gloomy thoughts about yourself as easily as you have got rid of your false, gloomy clothing," he said, passionately. "The mother and husband who made your life what it was are both where they can never hurt you again. Your character they never did touch, except in the most superficial way. When you told me your story, that night in the woods, you tried to make me think that you did voluntarily—what you did. You lied to me. I thought so then. I know it now. You were flattered and bullied, cajoled and coerced—a girl scarcely older than my sister Edith, whom we consider a child, whose father is distressed to even think of her as marriageable. It is time to stop feeling repentance for sins you never committed, and to look at yourself sanely and happily—if you must be introspective at all. No braver, lovelier, purer woman ever lived, or one more obviously intended to be a wife and mother. The sooner you become both, the better."

There was a moment of tense silence. Sylvia made no effort to draw away from him; at last she asked, in a voice which was almost pleading in its quality:

"Is that what you think of me?"

Austin dropped his hand. "Good God, Sylvia!" he said hoarsely; "don't you know by this time what I think of you?"

"Then you mean—that you want me to marry you?"

"No, no, no!" he cried. "Why are you so bound to misunderstand and misjudge me? I beg you not to ride by yourself, and you tell me I am 'dictating.' I go for months without hearing from you for fear of annoying you, and you accuse me of 'indifference.' I bring you a gift as a vassal might have done to his liege lady—and you shrink away from me in terror. I try to show you what manner of woman you really are, and you believe that I am displaying the same presumption which I have just condemned in my own brother. Are you so warped and embittered by one experience—a horrible one, but, thank Heaven, quickly and safely over with!—that you cannot believe me when I tell you that the best part of a decent man's love is not passion, but reverence? His greatest desire, not possession, but protection? His ultimate aim, not gratification, but sacrifice?"

He bent over her. She was sitting quite motionless, her head bowed, her face hidden in her hands; she was trembling from head to foot. He put his arm around her.

"Don't!" he said, his voice breaking; "don't, Sylvia. I've been rough and violent—lost my grip on myself—but it's all over now—I give you my word of honor that it is. Please lift your head up, and tell me that you forgive me!" He waited until it seemed as if his very reason would leave him if she did not answer him; then at last she dropped her hands, and raised her head. The moon shone full on her upturned face, and the look that Austin saw there was not one of forgiveness, but of something so much greater that he caught his breath before she moved or spoke to him.

"Are you blind?" she whispered. "Can't you see how I have felt—since Christmas night, even if you couldn't long before that? Don't you know why I just couldn't go away? But I thought you didn't care for me—that you couldn't possibly have kept away from me so long if you did—that you thought I wasn't good enough—Oh, my dear, my dear—" She laid both hands on his shoulders.

The next instant she was in his arms, his lips against hers, all the sorrow and bitterness of their lives lost forever in the glory of their first kiss.