ulge in these tactics with
Austen.

He shook his head again, and smiled at her vehemence.

"No, she's not playing with me--she isn't that kind. I'd like to tell
you, but I can't--I can't. It was only because you guessed that I said
anything about it." He disengaged his hand, and rose, and patted her on
the cheek. "I suppose I had to tell somebody," he said, "and you seemed,
somehow, to be the right person, Phrasie."

Euphrasia rose abruptly and looked up intently into his face. He thought
it strange afterwards, as he drove along the dark roads, that she had not
answered him.

Even though the matter were on the knees of the gods, Euphrasia would
have taken it thence, if she could. Nor did Austen know that she shared
with him, that night, his waking hours.

The next morning Mr. Thomas Gaylord, the younger, was making his way
towards the office of the Gaylord Lumber Company, conveniently situated
on Willow Street, near the railroad. Young Tom was in a particularly
jovial frame of mind, despite the fact that he had arrived in Ripton, on
the night express, as early as five o'clock in the morning. He had been
touring the State ostensibly on lumber business, but young Tom had a
large and varied personal as well as commercial acquaintance, and he had
the inestimable happiness of being regarded as an honest man, while his
rough and genial qualities made him beloved. For these reasons and others
of a more material nature, suggestions from Mr. Thomas Gaylord were apt
to be well received--and Tom had been making suggestions.

Early as he was at his office--the office-boy was sprinkling the floor
--young Tom had a visitor who was earlier still. Pausing in the doorway,
Mr. Gaylord beheld with astonishment a prim, elderly lady in a stiff,
black dress sitting upright on the edge of a capacious oak chair which
seemed itself rather discomfited by what it contained,--for its
hospitality had hitherto been extended to visitors of a very different
sort.

"Well, upon my soul," cried young Tom, "if it isn't Euphrasia!"

"Yes, it's me," said Euphrasia; "I've been to market, and I had a notion
to see you before I went home."

Mr. Gaylord took the office-boy lightly by the collar of his coat and
lifted him, sprinkling can and all, out of the doorway and closed the
door. Then he drew his revolving chair close to Euphrasia, and sat down.
They were old friends, and more than once in a youth far from model Tom
had experienced certain physi