's. Tears rushed to her eyes.

"I can't help it," she said. "I want you to be doing something real."

"Lydia!" said Jeff. His kind, persuasive voice was recalling her to some
ground of conviction where she could share his certainty that things
were going as well as they could. "This is almost the only real thing in
the world--the ground. About everything else is a game. This isn't a
game. It's making something grow that won't hurt anybody when it's
grown. I can't harm anybody by planting corn. And I can sell the corn,"
said Jeff, with a lighter shade of voice. Lydia knew he was smiling to
please her. "Denny's going to peddle it out for me at backdoors. I'd do
it myself, only I'm afraid they'd buy to help on 'poor Jeffrey Blake'."

When he spoke of the ground Lydia gave the loose dirt a little scornful
kick and got the powdered dust into her neat stockings. She, too, loved
the ground and all the sweet usages of homely life; but not if they kept
him from a spectacular triumph. She was desperate enough to venture her
one big plea.

"Jeff, you know you've got a lot of money to earn--to pay back--"

And there she stopped. He was regarding her gravely, but the moment he
spoke she knew it was not in any offence.

"Lydia, I give you my word I couldn't do the kind of thing you want me
to. I've found that out at last. You'd like me to cut into the market
and make a lot of money and throw it back at the people I owe. I
couldn't do it. My brain wouldn't let me. It's stopped--stopped short. A
man knows when he's done for. I'm absolutely and entirely done. All I
hope for is to keep father from finding it out. He seems to be getting
his nerve back, and if he really does that I may be able to go away and
do something besides dig. But it won't be anything spectacular, Lydia.
It isn't in me."

Lydia turned away from him, and he could fancy the bright tears dropping
as she walked. "Oh, dear!" he heard her say. "Oh, dear!"

"Lydia!" he called, in an impatience of tenderness and misery. "Come
back here. Don't you know I'd do anything on earth I could for you? But
there's nothing I can do. You wouldn't ask a lame man to dance. There!
that shows you. When it comes to dancing you can understand. I'm a
cripple, Lydia. Don't you see?"

She had turned obediently, and now she smeared the tears away with one
small hand.

"You don't understand," she said. "You don't understand a thing. We've
thought of it all this time, Anne and I, how yo