much as you used to," she would
remark. "Time was when you'd eat three and four at a sittin'."

"Phrasie, one of your persistent fallacies is, that I'm still a boy."

"You ain't yourself," said Euphrasia, ignoring this pleasantry, "and you
ain't been yourself for some months. I've seen it. I haven't brought you
up for nothing. If he's troubling you, don't you worry a mite. He ain't
worth it. He eats better than you do."

"I'm not worrying much about that," Austen answered, smiling. "The Judge
and I will patch it up before long--I'm sure. He's worried now over
these people who are making trouble for his railroad."

"I wish railroads had never been invented," cried Euphrasia. "It seems
to me they bring nothing but trouble. My mother used to get along pretty
well in a stage-coach."

One evening in September, when the summer days were rapidly growing
shorter and the mists rose earlier in the valley of the Blue, Austen,
who had stayed late at the office preparing a case, ate his supper at
the Ripton House. As he sat in the big dining room, which was almost
empty, the sense of loneliness which he had experienced so often of late
came over him, and he thought of Euphrasia. His father, he knew, had
gone to Kingston for the night, and so he drove up Hanover Street and
hitched Pepper to the stone post before the door. Euphrasia, according
to an invariable custom, would be knitting in the kitchen at this hour;
and at the sight of him in the window, she dropped her work with a
little, joyful cry.

"I was just thinking of you!" she said, in a low voice of tenderness
which many people would not have recognized as Euphrasia's; as though
her thoughts of him were the errant ones of odd moments! "I'm so glad
you come. It's lonesome here of evenings, Austen."

He entered silently and sat down beside her, in a Windsor chair which
had belonged to some remote Austen of bygone days.

"You don't have as good things to eat up at Mis' Jenney's as I give
you," she remarked. "Not that you appear to care much for eatables any
more. Austen, are you feeling poorly?"

"I can dig more potatoes in a day than any other man in Ripton," he
declared.

"You'd ought to get married," said Euphrasia, abruptly. "I've told you
that before, but you never seem to pay any attention to what I say."

"Why haven't you tried it, Phrasie?" he retorted.

He was not prepared for what followed. Euphrasia did not answer at once,
but presently her knitting dropp