since he had acquired them.

"Very becoming," she said, critically, as he put down the books on the
hall table, pulled off the handsome driving-gloves which, according to
Max, helped to disqualify him for his present ambitions, and shook hands
with heartiness. "You no longer look pathetic, but distinguished--even
scientific."

"'Scientific' is the word, if you want to flatter me," he declared,
throwing off his overcoat and gathering up the books again. "I'm
acquiring agricultural science by the peck measure--chock full and
running over. I've reached the point where I must get rid of some of it
upon my partners or suffer serious consequences. Max here? Was it he at
the window? I can't see more than a rod through these things yet--not
used to them."

"Yes, he's here. He always spends his Saturday half-holiday at home now.
The rest are away. Alec and Bob are off on the hill by the timber lot,
trying Mr. Ferry's toboggan with him--it's just come. Uncle Tim has gone
over to see how they're making it go."

"Glad the coast is clear. It might embarrass me to set forth my schemes
to more than two at once."

Sally led the way to the living-room--in old times the "drawing-room,"
but now deserving the less imposing title after a fashion which made it
the most homelike of apartments. It was the only room on the lower
floor--except the dining-room and kitchen--which the Lanes had attempted
to furnish for the winter, so the rugs and chairs, tables and couch, of
the little flat had been all that was necessary to make it habitable and
pleasant. A brisk fire burned on the wide hearth, of itself a furnishing
without which many a sumptuous room may seem cheerless and in-hospitable.
The walls were covered with a quaint old paper of white, with gold
stripes about which green ivy leaves wound conventionally. This might
have given the room a cold aspect, but Sally had hung curtains of
Turkey-red print at the windows, and had covered the couch and its
pillows with the same warm-coloured fabric, with a result so pleasing to
the eye that visitors, at the first sight, were wont to exclaim: "Who
would think you could have made this big room look so homelike? How have
you done it?"

"Thirty-two yards of Turkey-red," was Sally's customary demure answer,
and the visitor, if a woman, was sure to respond, "Oh, yes, of course.
Such a lovely idea for winter." If a man, he was more apt merely to stare
at Sally, with real respect for the feminine co