stop till you
get a whole field done."

"Quit kidding."

"Say, Annie, do you know a chicken when you see it walking round? Or a
turkey? Or a guinea keet? We got 'em all. Aunt Dolcey, she takes care
of 'em."

"I'd like to take care of 'em. I'll feed 'em, if she'll show me how."

"Aunt Dolcey'll show you. She'll be tickled to death to have somebody
feed 'em when she's got the mis'ry."

At Frederick they left the big motor bus and got into Wes's own
rackety flivver, the possession of which delighted Annie's heart.

"My land, I never thought I'd get married to a man that owned an
automobile," she confessed with flattering frankness in her voice.

"This ain't an automobile," said Wes. "It's a coffeepot, and an awful
mean one. Sometimes she won't boil, no matter what I do."

The coffeepot on this particular day chose to boil. They rattled
merrily out of Frederick and off into the higher hills beyond. It was
a little after noon when they reached the farm.

They had had to turn off the pike and take a winding wood road, rough
and muddy from the spring rains. All through the budding green of the
trees dogwood had hung out white bridal garlands for them, and there
were violets in all the little mossy hollows. At last they came
through to the clearing, where lay the farm, right on the ridge, its
fields smiling in the sun, a truce of Nature with man's energy and
persistence. Yet not a final truce. For all around, the woods crept up
to the open and thrust in tentative fingers--tiny pine trees, sprouts
and seedlings of hardwood, scraps of underbrush--all trying to gain a
foothold and even when cut and overturned by the sharp plough still
clinging tenaciously to their feeble rooting.

"It looks somehow," said Annie, vaguely understanding this, "as if the
trees and things were just waiting to climb over the walls."

"And that's what they are," said Wesley Dean. "The time I put in
grubbing! Well--let's go in and see Aunt Dolcey."

He had told her, coming out, that he was afraid she would find the
house sort of plain, but just the space of it delighted her. The rooms
were bare and square, whitewashed exquisitely, the furniture dark old
cherry and walnut of a style three generations past.

There were no blinds or curtains, and in the streaming sunlight Annie
could see that everything was clean and polished to the last flicker
of high light. Here and there were bits of colour--crimson and blue in
the rag carpet, golden bra