the office."

"Why, it can't be! He's always busy round that garden--or chopping wood
up in our timber tract. He asked Max to let him work at that--for the
sake of his muscle, he said."

"If you'll just stop and think, you'll find he isn't round all the time.
He's in the city every day--has to be. He holds a half-hour noon service
in the old church every day in the week for men. Fred Kentner says they
flock in there like sheep--says he goes in often. It's cool in there, and
he likes the things Ferry says. I'm going in with Fred some day soon. I'd
like to find out what a fellow that can chop trees and fight with his
fists can find to say in a pulpit."

"Fight with his fists!"

Bob chuckled. "I tackled him the other evening, out behind his house,
just for fun. I got all I wanted in about two minutes. He was laughing
all the time, but I couldn't get near him. He laid me on my back as
helpless as a baby. Say, if Mary Ann doesn't get round with the oatmeal
pretty soon, I'll have to go without. It's twenty minutes past six now."

"I'll see about it," and Sally hurried away, revolving in her mind this
astonishing news.

"He can't be as young as he looks, then," she said to herself. "I
shouldn't say he was a minute over twenty-five, but he must be."

Her mind turned later that day to a project more immediately promising
than the garden. She wanted to have a house party--a tent party, to be
accurate. The Burnsides had driven out twice to see them since they had
become established, but Jarvis had been having another siege with his
eyes, and Josephine had been entertaining visitors. Sally, in the
fast-increasing strength and enthusiasm of returning health, longed for
her friends, and began to plan how she could have all three with her for
the space of at least two days.

"Wait a little longer," counselled Uncle Timothy. "Your strength is more
that of happiness than of real physical gain, though you are certainly
acquiring health rapidly. There will be plenty of hot weather in August,
and you will be better fit to exert yourself."

Max and Alec backed him, for they were still more or less indifferent to
the charms of active exercise, and when they had been fed, each evening,
were in the habit of falling into postures of ease on the ground before
the tent, while they discussed the happenings of the day.

At the end of another fortnight, however, everybody admitted that Sally
seemed enough like herself to be permitted the