een just within my grasp, only to slip away again, through unforeseen
circumstances, and my ill luck reminds me of a story and picture in a
comic paper that the boys were chuckling over last night. It was of a
well-intentioned beetle who fattened a nice green caterpillar for its
family's thanksgiving dinner, and the thing went and spun itself into a
cocoon the night before!"

Martin Cortright at times verges on the pathetic, but always cures
himself by his appreciation of his own limitations before he reaches the
bore stage. He too is taking a short vacation from work, or rather I
should say that he has developed industry in a new direction and become
absorbed in entomology, to the extent of waging war on the tent
caterpillars that are disfiguring both the orchards and the wild cherry
trees of the highways with their untidy filmy nests, leaving the foliage
prematurely brown and sere, from their ravages. Yesterday, in driving
home from Pine Ridge with Sylvia, we noticed that even the wood edges had
the appearance of being scorched by fire, and many of the old orchards
where we go in May for apple blossoms are wrecks meshed in the
treacherous slimy webs.

Martin's methods are regular and very simple, but he goes about his task
each day as if the matter was a marvel of military strategy. First he
puts a book ostentatiously in one pocket and a flask of alcohol in the
other. Next he takes his torch, consisting of a piece of sponge wired to
an old rake handle, which he keeps on the back stoop, and makes sure that
it is tight and secure, finally searching me out to say that in case he
meets Miss Lavinia, have I any message for her.

Why he does not keep his outfit up at Martha's I do not know; perhaps
because of Timothy's keen tongue.

Miss Lavinia, after her morning housekeeping is over, takes her work bag
to the narrow cottage porch and apparently gives herself up to the task
of making pin-cushions for Sylvia or embroidering initials on napery.
Suddenly she will get up, say that her feet are falling asleep and that
she needs a walk to restore her circulation. Will Sylvia go with her?
Sylvia, after pretending to consider, thinks not, making some excuse of
its being too warm or that she expects Horace that day. Presently two
prim people walking in opposite directions meet and, taking the same
path, may be seen any morning along the less frequented roads and orchard
paths, sometimes repairing the torch that has a constant te