oo much work for you, with the men to cook for."

"Just you let her stay and enjoy herself. I get along all right."

After a pause she asked, "Did you see some one in the orchard just now?"

"No."

"Mary she ran down after supper, and she said a strange lady was there.
I wondered who it was."

"I didn't see her," he said, dully, as though he spoke from the midst
of some absorbing thought; then he got up and walked away. "You better
go in and light the lamp if you want to sew," he said, roughly.

Calista took her things and went at once, looking as though she were so
well satisfied that she could afford to be amused.

Though in the next two weeks she had plenty of company Conrad never
joined them: he spent the evenings with John Albrecht, drove to
Bernville, or went to bed early. He worked much harder than usual, and
his cheeks grew thin under his stubble of black beard. Calista did not
trouble him with conversation.

"Don't you feel good?" she once asked, and when he gave a surly answer
she said, carelessly, "You better get something from the doctor," and
began to sing immediately afterwards. But she knew how he looked even
when her back was turned, and she often stared at Mary in a meditative
way as though the child were the doubtful quantity in an important
calculation.

She was watching her so one day, when little John Albrecht and his
sister had come over and the three were very busy on the grass near the
kitchen window with two dolls and the old tiger-cat. In the afternoon
silence their little voices sounded clear and sweet. The cat escaped to
a cherry-tree and they chased him gayly, but he went to sleep in an
insulting way in spite of the lilac switch that John flourished.

"Look out!" Mary called.

John looked around and said, "For what?" and she went over to him.

There was a conversation which Calista could not hear; Mary pointed
several times to a spot in the sunny grass; then he went running down
the road and Katie followed, looking as though she would cry when she
had time, and leaving her doll behind her.

Calista went out. "What did you say to John to make them run off?" she
asked.

"I told him to look out, he would hit the lady with the switch."

"What lady?"

"She was there."

"Where is she now?"

"I don't know."

"Can't you see her?"

"No, ma'am."

Calista looked all about. Not a soul was in sight on the road; in the
orchard and the fields nothing moved but the wind; the yard