elp looking at it. Gee, I wish I
could get you one like that!"

"What did you think of her looks?" asked Kate.

"Might pretty!" said Adam, promptly. "Small, but not tiny; plump, but
not fat; pink, light curls, big baby blue eyes and a sort of hesitating
way about her, as if she were anxious to do the right thing, but feared
she might not, and wished somebody would take care of her."

Kate threw out her hands with a rough exclamation. "I get the
picture!" she said. "It's a dead centre shot. THAT gets a man, every
time. No man cares a picayune about a woman who can take care of
herself, and help him with his job if he has a ghost of a chance at a
little pink and white clinger, who will suck the life and talent out of
him, like the parasite she is, while she makes him believe he is on the
job, taking care of her. You can rest assured it will be settled
before Christmas."

Kate had been right in her theories concerning the growing of blue
ribbon corn. At the County Fair in late September Adam exhibited such
heavy ears of evenly grained white and yellow corn that the blue ribbon
he carried home was not an award of the judges; it was a concession to
the just demands of the exhibit.

Then they began husking their annual crop. It had been one of the
country's best years for corn. The long, even, golden ears they were
stripping the husks from and stacking in heaps over the field might
profitably have been used for seed by any farmer. They had divided the
field in halves and Adam was husking one side, Kate the other. She had
a big shock open and kneeling beside it she was busy stripping open the
husks, and heaping up the yellow ears. Behind her the shocks stood like
rows of stationed sentinels; above, the crisp October sunshine warmed
the air to a delightful degree; around the field, the fence rows were
filled with purple and rose coloured asters, and everywhere goldenrod,
yellower than the corn, was hanging in heavy heads of pollen-spraying
bloom.

On her old pink quilt Little Poll, sound asleep, was lifted from the
shade of one shock to another, while Kate worked across her share of
the field. As she worked she kept looking at the child. She frankly
adored her, but she kept her reason and held to rigid rules in feeding,
bathing, and dressing. Poll minded even a gesture or a nod.

Above, the flocking larks pierced the air with silver notes, on the
fence-rows the gathering robins called to each other; high in