sis, I--I was one of those boys."

He looked at her appealingly and felt his heart sink. Persis' eyes
were lowered. Her face was grave and a little sad as befits one who
has been tendered irrefutable proof of a friend's unworthiness. Thomas
gulped. Well, it was only what he had expected all along. A woman
like Persis could not be asked to overlook everything.

"Good night, Persis," he said huskily, and he thought it more than his
deserts when she answered him with her usual kindness, "Good night,
Thomas."

CHAPTER III

A FITTING

During the spring and summer Persis rose at half past five, and though
she slept little the night following Thomas Hardin's disclosures, she
refused to concede to her feeling of weariness so much as an extra
half-hour. Her fitful slumbers had been haunted by dreams of apples,
apples in barrels, apples in baskets, apples dropping from full
boughs and pelting her like hail-stones, for all her dodging. There
were feverishly red apples, gnarly green apples and the golden sweets,
the favorites of her childhood, all of them turning into goblins as she
approached, and leering up at her out of impish eyes which nevertheless
bore a startling resemblance to those eyes in whose depths she had once
seen only the reflection of her own loyalty. It was small wonder that
Persis woke unrefreshed. "I declare," she mused, as she twisted her
hair into the unyielding knob, highly in favor among the feminine
residents of Clematis as a morning coiffure, "a few more nights like
that would set me against apple pie for good and all."

But the developments of the day were soon to elbow out of Persis'
thoughts the visions of the night. As she stepped out on the porch for
a whiff of the invigorating morning air, her eyes fell upon a unique
figure coming toward her across the dewy grass. In certain details it
gave a realistic presentment of an Indian famine sufferer. In respect
to costume, it was reminiscent of a bathing beach in mid-July.

"Of all things!" Persis gasped, one hand groping for support, while the
other shaded her incredulous and indignant eyes. "Have you taken leave
of your senses, Joel Dale?"

Her brother ascended the steps, wearing the expression of triumph
ordinarily assumed in honor of his great hygienic discoveries. He
replied to her question by another: "Persis, what do you s'pose is at
the bottom of all human ills?"

Persis rallied.

"I don't know as I'd undertake to