; it pleased her vanity, too, to feel how her nonsense and
fun lightened his temperamental gravity, playing in and out and over it
like a butterfly in a smoke bush. She would be safe with Philip always,
but safety had no special charm for one of her age, who had never
been in peril. Mark's superior knowledge of the world, moreover, his
careless, buoyant manner of carrying himself, his gay, boyish audacity,
all had a very distinct charm for her;--and yet--

But there would be no "and yet" a little later. Patty's heart would
blaze quickly enough when sufficient heat was applied to it, and Mark
was falling more and more deeply in love every day. As Patty vacillated,
his purpose strengthened; the more she weighed, the more he ceased to
weigh, the difficulties of the situation; the more she unfolded herself
to him, the more he loved and the more he respected her. She began by
delighting his senses; she ended by winning all that there was in him,
and creating continually the qualities he lacked, after the manner of
true women even when they are very young and foolish.

XVIII. A STATE O' MAINE PROPHET

SUMMER was dying hard, for although it had passed, by the calendar,
Mother Nature was still keeping up her customary attitude.

There had been a soft rain in the night and every spear of grass was
brilliantly green and tipped with crystal. The smoke bushes in the
garden plot, and the asparagus bed beyond them, looked misty as the sun
rose higher, drying the soaked earth and dripping branches. Spiders'
webs, marvels of lace, dotted the short grass under the apple trees.
Every flower that had a fragrance was pouring it gratefully into the
air; every bird with a joyous note in its voice gave it more joyously
from a bursting throat; and the river laughed and rippled in the
distance at the foot of Town House Hill. Then dawn grew into full
morning and streams of blue smoke rose here and there from the Edgewood
chimneys. The world was alive, and so beautiful that Waitstill felt like
going down on her knees in gratitude for having been born into it and
given a chance of serving it in any humble way whatsoever.

Wherever there was a barn, in Riverboro or Edgewood, one could have
heard the three-legged stools being lifted from the pegs, and then
would begin the music of the milk-pails; first the resonant sound of the
stream on the bottom of the tin pail, then the soft delicious purring of
the cascade into the full bucket, while