if they can come. And so you're
going to Kingsport? What a nice time you will have. I must give you a
letter to a friend of mine there--Mrs. Jonas Blake."

"I've prevailed on Mrs. Thomas Holt to go with me," said Miss Cornelia
complacently. "It's time she had a little holiday, believe ME. She
has just about worked herself to death. Tom Holt can crochet
beautifully, but he can't make a living for his family. He never seems
to be able to get up early enough to do any work, but I notice he can
always get up early to go fishing. Isn't that like a man?"

Anne smiled. She had learned to discount largely Miss Cornelia's
opinions of the Four Winds men. Otherwise she must have believed them
the most hopeless assortment of reprobates and ne'er-do-wells in the
world, with veritable slaves and martyrs for wives. This particular
Tom Holt, for example, she knew to be a kind husband, a much loved
father, and an excellent neighbor. If he were rather inclined to be
lazy, liking better the fishing he had been born for than the farming
he had not, and if he had a harmless eccentricity for doing fancy work,
nobody save Miss Cornelia seemed to hold it against him. His wife was
a "hustler," who gloried in hustling; his family got a comfortable
living off the farm; and his strapping sons and daughters, inheriting
their mother's energy, were all in a fair way to do well in the world.
There was not a happier household in Glen St. Mary than the Holts'.

Miss Cornelia returned satisfied from the house up the brook.

"Leslie's going to take him," she announced. "She jumped at the
chance. She wants to make a little money to shingle the roof of her
house this fall, and she didn't know how she was going to manage it. I
expect Captain Jim'll be more than interested when he hears that a
grandson of the Selwyns' is coming here. Leslie said to tell you she
hankered after cherry pie, but she couldn't come to tea because she has
to go and hunt up her turkeys. They've strayed away. But she said, if
there was a piece left, for you to put it in the pantry and she'd run
over in the cat's light, when prowling's in order, to get it. You
don't know, Anne, dearie, what good it did my heart to hear Leslie send
you a message like that, laughing like she used to long ago.

"There's a great change come over her lately. She laughs and jokes
like a girl, and from her talk I gather she's here real often."

"Every day--or else I'm over there," sa