I shall not here recount the events on the farm during the weeks which followed Miss Stella's departure. They did not particularly interest me. My whole psychological make-up had been violently shaken, the centres of attention had been shifted, and I was constantly struggling for a readjustment which did not come. The post-office appealed to me more than the peas, and I laboured harder over my photographs of the sundial beds than over the beds themselves. I sent for a ray filter and a wide-angle lens, spending hours in experiment and covering a plank in front of the south door with printing frames.

I had written to her the day after she had departed, but no reply came for a week, and then only a brief little note, telling me it was hot in town and conveying her regards to the roses. I, too, waited a week — though it was hard — and then answered, sending some photographs, one of them a snapshot of a bird on the edge of the bath, one of them of Buster sitting on his hind legs. Again she answered briefly, merrily, conveying her especial regards to Buster, but ending with a plaintive little postscript about the heat.

I sat, the evening after this letter arrived, in my big, cool room, with Buster beside me, and thought of her down there in the swelter of town. I wanted to answer her letter, and wanted to answer it tenderly. I was lonely in my great, cool room; I was unspeakably lonely.

Suddenly it occurred to me that this was the evening of Class Day. The Yard was full of lanterns, of music, of shimmering dresses, of pretty faces, of young men in mortar boards and gowns. I might have been sitting in the deep window recess of my old room above the Yard, drinking in the scene with the pleasant impersonal wistfulness of an older man in the presence of happy youth. But I wasn't. I was sitting here alone with Buster, thinking of a poor girl in a hot, lonely New York lodging-house. I pulled my pad toward me and wrote her a letter. It read:

Dear, Nice Lady: I'm lying here on the rug, my tail quite tired after a hard day's work, looking up in Mr. John's face. His face is kind of glum and his eyes sort of faraway looking. I don't know what's the matter with him. He's been that way nights for two or three weeks now, which makes me sad, too; only he goes to the post-office often, which makes me glad, 'cause I love to walk or to run behind the buggy, and there's a collie pup on the way who is very nice. What do you suppose is the trouble? Sometimes he goes to the brook and sits on a stone by a pool there, while I go wading and get my stummick wet and drippy and cool. I wish you'd come back. I didn't get to know you so awful well, but I liked you, and a house with just one glum, stupid man in it ain't — I mean isn't — very nice, 'specially as Peter's still at school. Schools last awful late up here.

I am yours waggishly —

"Here, Buster," said I. The pup rose and snuggled his nose into my lap. I picked him up, held his forepaw firmly and put some ink on it with the end of a match. Then I held the paper below it, pressed the paw down, and made a signature, wiping the paw afterward with a blotter. Buster enjoyed the strange operation, and wagged his tail furiously. I sealed and addressed the letter, and went to bed.

A few days later a box came addressed to Buster in my care. I opened it in Buster's presence, indeed literally beneath his nose. On top was a small package, tied with blue ribbon, and labelled "For Buster." It proved to be a dog biscuit, which the recipient at once took to the hearth and began upon. Beneath this was a note, which I opened with eager fingers. It began:

DARLING BUSTER: Your waggish epistle received and contents noted. While most of us at times agree with him who said that the more he saw of men the better he liked dogs, nevertheless the canine intelligence is in some ways limited. Pray do not misunderstand me, dear Buster. In its limits lies its loyalty! No man is a hero to his valet, but every man to his dog. However, these same limits of the canine intelligence, which logic compels me to assume that you also possess, are probably responsible for your mistake in assigning the term glumness to what you observe in Master John, when it is really lack of occupation. You see, dear Buster, he has got Twin Fires so far under way that he doesn't work at it all the time, so he ought to be at his writing of stories, made up of big dictionary words which I am defining or inventing for him down here in a very hot, dirty, dusty, smelly town. He isn't doing that, is he? Won't you please tell him to? Tell him that's all the trouble. He has a reaction from his first farming enthusiasm, and doesn't realize that the thing to do is to go to work on the new line, his line. For it is his line, you know, Buster. Underneath this you'll find something to give him, with my best wishes for sunshine on the dear garden. I'd kiss you, Buster, only dogs are terribly germy.

Stella.

P.S. That is a nice pool, isn't it?

I sat on the floor with the letter in my lap, smiling happily over it. Then I took the last package out of the box. It was heavy, evidently metal. Removing the papers, I held in my hand an old bronze sundial plate, a round one to fit my column, and upon it, freshly engraved, the ancient motto —

Horas Non Numero Nisi Serenas

My first thought was of its cost. She couldn't afford it, the silly, generous girl! She'd bought it, doubtless, at one of those expensive New York antique shops, and then taken it to an engraver's, for further expense. I ought not accept it. Yet how could I refuse? I couldn't. I hugged it to my heart, and fairly ran to the dial post, Buster at my heels. It was already nearly noon, so I set it on the pedestal, got a level and a pot of glue, which was the only means of securing it to the post which I had, and watch in hand waited for the minute of twelve. At the minute, I set the shadow between the noon lines, levelled it with thin bits of match underneath, and glued it down. Then I stood off and surveyed it, sitting there in the sun — her dial! Then I ran for my camera.

I developed the film at once, and made a print that afternoon. When it was made, I went out into the vegetable garden, on a sudden impulse to work off physical energy, took the wheel hoe away from Mike, and began to cultivate.

Did you ever spend an afternoon with a wheel hoe, up and down, up and down, between rows of beets and carrots and onions, between cauliflower plants and tomato vines, between pepper plants and lettuce? It requires a certain fixity of attention to keep the weeders or the cultivator teeth close to the plants without also injuring them. But there is a soothing monotony in the forward pushes of the machine, and a profound satisfaction in seeing the weeds come up, the ground grow clean and brown and broken on each side of the row behind you, and to feel, too, how much you are accomplishing with the aid of this comparatively simple tool.

My early peas were ready for market. Mike announced that he was going to take the first lot over in the morning. They had been planted very late, but fortune had favoured them, and now they were hardly more than a week behind Bert's, which had been planted early in April. The foot-high corn was waving in the breeze, the long rows of delicate onion tops, of beets, carrots, radishes, and lettuce plants were as characteristically different as the vegetables themselves. I fixed their characteristics in my vision. I suddenly found myself taking a renewed interest in the farm. As I paused to wipe my bronzed forehead or relight my pipe, I would raise my head and look back over the rows, or through the trellis aqueduct to the house, seeing the sundial telling the hours on the lawn, and think of Stella, think of her down in the hot city, where I knew at last that I should not let her stay.

Yes, I had no longer any doubts. I wanted her. I should always want her. Twin Fires was incomplete, I was incomplete, life was incomplete, without her. I pushed the hoe with redoubled zeal, long after Mike had milked the cows and departed.

At six I stopped, amazed to find the plot of a story in my head. Heaven knows how it got there, but there it was, almost as full-statured as Minerva when she sprang from the head of Jove, though considerably less glacial. I even had the opening sentence all ready framed — to me always the most difficult point of story or essay, except the closing sentence. Nor did this tale appear to be one I had incubated in the past, and which now popped up above the "threshold" from my subconsciousness. It was a brand-new plot, a perfect stranger to me. The phenomenon interested me almost as much as the plot. The tale grew even clearer as I took my bath, and haunted me during supper, so that I was peremptory in my replies to poor Mrs. Pillig and refused to aid Peter that evening with his geography.

"To-morrow," said I, vaguely, going into my study and locking the door.

I worked all that evening, got up at midnight to forage for a glass of milk and a fresh supply of oil for my lamp, and returned to my desk to work till four, when the sun astonished me. The story was done! Instead of going to bed, I went down in the cool of the young morning, when only the birds were astir, and took my bath in Stella's pool. Then I went to the dew-drenched pea vines and began to pick peas.

Here Mike found me, with nearly half a bushel gathered, when he appeared early to pick for market.

"It's the early bird gets the peas," said I.

"It is shurely," he laughed. "You might say you had a tiliphone call to get up — only these ain't tiliphones."

"Mike!" I cried, "a pun before breakfast!"

"Shure, I've had me breakfast," said he.

Which reminded me that I hadn't. I went in the house to get it, reading over and correcting my manuscript as I ate. After breakfast I put on respectable clothes, tucked the manuscript in my pocket, and mounted the seat of my farm wagon, beside Mike. Behind us were almost two bushels of peas and several bunches of tall, juicy, red rhubarb stalks from the old hills we found on the place. Mike had greatly enriched the soil, and grown the plants in barrels.

"Well, I'm a real farmer now," said I.

"Ye are, shurely," Mike replied. "Them's good peas, if they was planted late."

We drove past the golf links and the summer hotel, to the market, where I was already known, I found, and greeted by name as I entered.

"I'll buy anything you'll sell me," said the proprietor, "and be glad to get it. Funny thing about this town, the way folks won't take the trouble to sell what they raise. Most of the big summer estates have their own gardens, of course, but there's nearly a hundred families that don't, and four boarding-houses, and the hotels. Why, the hotels send to New York for vegetables — if you can beat that! Guess all our farmers with any gumption have gone to the cities."

"Well," said I, "I'm not in farming for my health, which has always been good. I've got more than a bushel of peas out there."

"Peas!" cried the market man. "Why, I have more demands for peas than I can fill. The folks who could sell me peas won't plant 'em 'cause it's too much trouble or expense to provide the brush. I'll give you eight cents a quart for peas to-day."

"This is too easy," I whispered to Mike, as we went out to get the baskets.

I sold my rhubarb also, and came away with a little book in which there was entered to my credit $4.16 for peas and $1.66 for rhubarb. I put the book proudly in my pocket, for it represented my first earnings from the farm, and mounting the farm wagon again told Mike to drive me to the hotel.

As we pulled up before the veranda, the line of old ladies in rockers focussed their eyes upon us.

"Shure," whispered Mike, "they look like they was hung out to dry!"

I went up the steps and into the office, where the hotel proprietor suavely greeted me, asked after my health, and inquired how my "estate" was getting on.

"You mean my farm," said I.

He smiled politely, but not without a skepticism which annoyed me. I hastened from him, and left my manuscript with the stenographer, who had arrived for the summer.

"I'll call for the copy to-morrow noon," said I. Then I went to the telegraph booth and sent a day letter to Stella. "Buster sending me to thank you," it read. "Meet me Hotel Belmont six to-morrow. Sold over a bushel of peas to-day. Prepare to celebrate."

"Mike," said I, returning to the cart, "drop me at the golf club. Tell Mrs. Pillig not to expect me to lunch."

It was ten o'clock when we arrived at the entrance to the club. I jumped out and Mike drove on. The professional took my name, and promised to hand it to the proper authorities as a candidate. Then I paid the fee for the day, borrowed some clubs from him, and we set out. I had not touched a club since the winter set in. How good the driver felt in my hand! How sweetly the ball flew from the club (as the golf ball advertisements phrase it), on the first attempt! I sprang down the course in pursuit, elated to see that I had driven even with the pro. Alas! my second was not like unto it! His second spun neatly up on the green and came to rest. Mine went off my mashie like a cannon ball, and overshot into the road. My third went ten feet. But it was glorious. Why shouldn't a farmer play golf? Why shouldn't a golfer run a farm? Why shouldn't either write stories? Heavens, what a lot of pleasant things there are to do in the world, I thought to myself, as I finally reached the green and sank my putt. Poor Stella, sweltering over a dictionary in New York! Soon she'd be here, too. She should learn to play golf, she should dig flower beds, she should wade in a brook. I flubbed my second drive.

"You're taking your eye off," said the pro.

"I'm taking my mind off," said I. "Give me a stroke a hole from here, for double the price of the round, or quits?"

"You're on," said he.

I stung him, too! I felt so elated that I went back to the hotel for an elaborate luncheon, and returned for eighteen holes more. The feats a man can perform the first day after he has had no sleep are astonishing. The second day it is different. In fact, I began to get groggy about the tenth hole that afternoon, so that the pro. got back his losses, as in a burst of bravado I had offered to double the morning bet. He came back with an unholy 68 that afternoon, confound him! They always do when the bet is big enough, which is really why they are called professionals.

That night I slept ten hours, worked over my manuscripts most of the next morning, packed a load of them in my suitcase, and after an early dinner got Peter to drive me to the train, for his school had now closed.

"Peter," said I at the station, "your job is to take care of your mother, and keep the kindlings split, and drive to market for Mike when he needs you. Also to water the lawn and flower beds with the spray nozzle every morning. Mind, now, the spray nozzle! If I find you've used the heavy stream, I'll — I'll — I'll sell Buster!"

That amiable creature tried to climb aboard the train with me, and Peter had to haul him off by the tail. My last sight of Bentford was a yellow dog squirming and barking in a small boy's arms.

The train was hot and stuffy. It grew hotter and stuffier as we came out of the mountains into the Connecticut lowlands, and we were all sweltering in the Pullman by the time New York was reached. As I stepped out of the Grand Central station into Forty-second Street my ears were assaulted by the unaccustomed din, my nose by the pungent odour of city streets, my eyes smarted in a dust whirl. But my heart was pounding with joy and expectation as I hurried across the street.

I climbed the broad steps to the lobby of the hotel, and scarcely had my feet reached the top than I saw a familiar figure rise from a chair. I ran toward her, waving off the boy who rushed to grab my bag. A second later her hand was in mine, her eyes upon my eyes.

"It — it was nice of Buster to send you," she said.

"You look so white, so tired," I answered. "Where is all your tan?"

"Melted," she laughed. "Have you business in town? It's awfully hot here, you poor man."

"Yes," said I, "I have business here, very important business. But first some supper and a spree. I've got 'most two bushels of peas to spend!"

We had a gay supper, and then took a cab, left my grip at my college club, where I had long maintained a non-resident membership, and drove thence to Broadway.

"How like Bentford Main Street!" I laughed, as we emerged from Fourty-fourth Street into the blaze of grotesque electric signs which have a kind of bizarre beauty, none the less. "Where shall we go?"

"There's a revival of 'Patience' at the Casino," she suggested, "and there are the Ziegfeld Follies —— "

"Not the Follies," I answered. "I'm neither a drummer nor a rural Sunday-school superintendent. Gilbert and Sullivan sounds good, and I've never heard 'Patience.'"

We found our places in the Casino just as the curtain was going up, and I saw "Patience" for the first time. I was glad it was for the first time, because she was with me, to share my delight. As incomparable tune after tune floated out to us the absurdest of absurd words, her eyes twinkled into mine, and our shoulders leaned together, and finally, between the seats, I squeezed her fingers with unrestrainable delight.

"Nice Gilbert and Sullivan," she whispered.

"It's a masterpiece; it's a masterpiece!" I whispered back. "It's as perfect in its way as — as your sundial! Oh, I'm so glad you are with me!"

"Is it worth coming way to New York for?"

"Under the conditions, around the world for," said I.

She coloured rosy, and looked back at the stage.

After the performance she would not let me get a cab. "You've not that many peas on the place," she said. So we walked downtown to her lodgings, through the hot, dusty, half-deserted streets, into the older section of the city below Fourteenth Street. I said little, save to answer her volley of eager questions about the farm. At the steps of an ancient house near Washington Square she paused.

"Here is where I live," she said. "I've had a lovely evening. Shall I see you again before you go back?"

I smiled, took the latchkey from her hand, opened the door, and stepped behind her, to her evident surprise, into the large, silent, musty-smelling hall. She darted a quick look about, but I ignored it, taking her hand and leading her quickly into the parlour, where, by the faint light from the hall, I could see an array of mid-Victorian plush. The house was silent. Still holding her hand, I drew her to me.

"I am not going back — alone," I whispered. "You are going with me. Stella, I cannot live without you. Twin Fires is crying for its mistress. You are going back, too, away from the heat and dust and the town, into a house where the sweet air wanders, into the pines where the hermit sings and the pool is thirsty for your feet."

I heard in the stillness a strange sob, and suddenly her head was on my breast and her tears were flowing. My arms closed about her.

Presently she lifted her face, and our lips met. She put up her hands and held my face within them. "So that was what the thrush said, after all," she whispered, with a hint of a happy smile.

"To me, yes," said I. "I didn't dream it was to you. Was it to you?"

"That you'll never know," she answered, "and you'll always be too stupid to guess."

"Stupid! You called me that once before about the painters. Why were you angry about choosing the dining-room paint?"

She grew suddenly wistful. "I'll tell you that," she said. "It was — it was because you let a third person into our little drama of Twin Fires. I — I was a fool, maybe. But I was playing out a kind — a kind of dream of home building. Two can play such a dream, if they don't speak of it. But not three. Then it becomes — it becomes, well, matter-of-facty, and people talk, and the bloom goes, and — you hurt me a little, that's all."

I could not reply for a moment. What man can before the wistful sweetness of a woman's secret moods? I could only kiss her hair. Finally words came. "The dream shall be reality now," I said, "and you and I together will make Twin Fires the loveliest spot in all the hills. To-morrow we'll buy a stair carpet, and — lots of things — together."

"Still with the pea money?" she gurgled, her gayety coming back. "No, sir; I've some money, too. Not much, but a little to take the place of the wedding presents I've no relatives to give me. I want to help furnish Twin Fires." She laid her fingers on my protesting lips. "I shall, anyway," she added. "We are two lone orphans, you and I, but we have each other, and all that is mine is yours, all — all — all!"

Suddenly she threw her arms about my neck, and I was silent in the mystery of her passion.