every
blessed detail of the picking before we catch a glimpse of her." Mrs.
Tiffany smiled sadly, as though this industry were somewhat tragic.

"I wonder how long Eleanor will be contented with such a way of life?"
put in Judge Tiffany.

"I've worried over that," answered his wife. "Suppose she should
settle down to it? It isn't as though Eleanor hadn't her chance at
travel and society and the things a girl of her breeding should have.
This is all her deliberate choice, and I've done nothing to help her
choose. Perhaps I should have decided for her. It's curious the guard
that girl keeps over her deeper feelings. How unlike she is to her
mother--and yet how like--" Her thought shifted suddenly with the
direction of her eyes. "Hasn't Olsen overloaded that little team?" she
said.

The cutting-shed stood midway of their course. Twenty women and girls,
their lips going as rapidly as their knives, sat on fruit crates at
long tables, slicing the red-and-gold balls apart, flicking out the
stones, laying the halves to dry in wooden trays. A wagon had just
arrived from the orchard. Olsen, the Swedish foreman, was heaving the
boxes to his Portuguese assistant, who passed them on into the cutting
shed. Further on stood the bleaching kilns; still further, the bright
green trees with no artistic irregularities of outline--trees born,
like a coolie, to bear burdens. Now the branches bent in arcs under
loads of summer-gilded fruit.

Long step-ladders straddling piles of boxes, beside this row or that,
showed where picking was going forward. Mrs. Tiffany halted under one
tree to call pleasantries up to a Portuguese, friend of many a harvest
before. Judge Tiffany proceeded on down the row, pausing to inspect
the boxes for any fruit gathered before it was ripe.

The first picker was a Chinese. His box, of course, showed only
perfection of workmanship. The Judge called up familiarly:

"Hello, Charlie!"

A yellow face grinned through the branches; the leaves rustled as
though some great bird were foraging, and the answer came back:

"Hello you Judge!" The Judge picked over the next two boxes without
comment; at the third, he stopped longer.

"Too much greenery, young man!" he cried at length. The branches of
this tree rustled, and a pair of good, sturdy legs, clad in corduroys,
appeared on the ladder; then the owner of the legs vaulted from four
feet high in the air, and hit the ground beside his box.

He was a stalwart boy o