ry stubble of the
newly cut wheat was rough underfoot as she set off for Amzi's. There was
much sowing and reaping in the world, she philosophized, and far too
much chaff in the garnered grain! Life, that might be so simple if every
one would only be a little bit reasonable, unfolded itself before her in
dim, bewildering vistas.

Fred had started to meet her, and she saw his stalwart figure against
the fading west.

"Mr. Montgomery is getting nervous about you; he said for you to hurry!
The fact is that I bored him and he needs you to cheer him up."

"Which is fishing," Phil replied. "I had the dishes to wash. There's a
lot to do in a camp."

"You'd better not mention the dishwashing; that's what made him cross."

"Cross! Dear old Amy cross!" laughed Phil. "Why, Fred, he doesn't know
how to spell the word!"

They followed a lane beside a cornfield, talking spiritedly. Fred
paused, lifted his head and filled his lungs with the fresh cool air. It
was with a sense of elation that he traversed these fields of his own
tilling and sowing and reaping. There was something in his bronzed face
that had not been there when Phil first knew him. He carried his
shoulders straighter and was less timid; he expressed himself with more
confidence and was beyond question on very good terms with the world. At
every meeting they had somehow seemed to make progress; they really got
on famously together now that he was no longer shy in her company and
had caught the spirit of her humor.

She had wondered frequently whether she was in love with him. Her
speculations had been purely subjective; she had not been concerned in
the least with his attitude toward her. It had occurred to her in other
moods that he would be an interesting character in a book and she had
even jotted down notes which would have astonished him greatly if he had
been vouchsafed a glance at those amazing memoranda. Viewed objectively
he was an attractive protagonist for a story dealing with the return to
the soil of a young man, who, trying city life without success, sought
refuge in the fields of his ancestors. The heroine must be a haughty
city girl whose scorn should yield slowly to admiration and love. The
last chapter of the tale should be called "The Harvest." She thought
well of the idea, and meant to sketch an outline of it as soon as she
finished a short story about the young gentleman who presided over the
soda-fountain at Struby's, the simple chronicle o