the window-sash, looking out and planning her garden, Jake
Preble came. Mariana was not conscious that she had expected him, but
his coming seemed the one note needed to complete recaptured harmony.
What she might have prepared to say to him if she had paused to remember
Lizzie Ann's ideal of woman's behavior, she did not think. She turned to
him, her face running over with pure delight, and put the comprehensive
question:--

"Ain't this elegant?"

"You bet it is," said Jake. He did not seem the same man, neither the
sombre dullard of the winter, nor the Jake of former years who had
fulfilled the routine of his life with no comment on its rigor or its
ease. His face was warmly flushed and his eyes shone upon her. "I don't
know 's I ever see a nicer place," said he, "except it's mine. Say,
Mariana, what you goin' to do?"

"When?" Mariana inquired innocently.

"Now. Right off, to-morrer, next day."

She laughed.

"I'm goin' to start my garden and wash my dishes and hang out clo'es,
and then I'm goin' to begin all over again and do the same things; but
it'll be my garden and my dishes and my clo'es. And I'm goin' to be as
happy as the day is long."

"Say," said Jake, "you don't s'pose you could come over to my house an'
do it?"

"Work out some more? Why, I ain't but just over one job. You expect me
to take another?"

Mariana was not in the least embarrassed. Lizzie Ann was right, she
thought. Men-folks studied their own comfort, and Jake, even, having had
a cosy nest all winter, had learned the way of making one of his own.
Suddenly she trembled. He was looking at her in a way she wondered at,
not as if he were Jake at all, but another like him, from warm,
beseeching eyes.

"You shouldn't do a hand's turn if you didn't want to," he was assuring
her, with that entreating look. "We'd keep a girl, an' Mondays I'd stay
home an' turn the wringer. Mariana, I know you set everything by your
house, but you could fix mine over any way you liked. You could throw
out a bay-winder if you wanted, or build a cupelow."

"Why," said Mariana, so softly that he bent to hear, "what's set you out
to want a housekeeper?"

"It ain't a housekeeper," said Jake. "I've had enough o' housekeepin'
long as I live, seein' you fetch an' carry for Eb Hanscom. Why, Mariana,
I just love you. I want a wife."

Mariana walked away from him to the window and stood looking out again,
only that, instead of the wet garden with the clumps of lark