stock this spring, and I expect to set up a milk-route."

"How under the sun you goin' to manage that?" She seldom questioned her
lawful head, but the surprise of the moment spurred her into a query
more expressive of her own mood than a probing of his. "You can't keep
any more cows'n you've got now. The barn ain't big enough."

"The Turnbull barn is. I've seen the day when there was forty head o'
cattle tied up there from fall to spring."

"The Turnbull barn's twenty minutes' walk from here. You can't go over
there mornin' and evenin', milkin' and feedin' the critters. You'd be
all the time on the road."

"Yes," said Myron, "'tis a good stretch. So I've made up my mind we'd
move over there."

A significant note had come into his voice. It indicated a complexity of
understanding: chiefly that she would by nature resist what he had to
say, and then resume her customary acquiescence. But for a moment she
forgot that he was Mr. Dill, and that she had promised to obey him.

"Why, Myron," she said, with a mild passion, warmed by her incredulity,
"we've lived on this place thirty year."

"Yes, yes," said her husband. "I know that. What's the use o' goin' back
over the ground, and tellin' me things I know as well as you do? What if
'tis thirty year? Time we got into better quarters."

"But they ain't better. Only it's more work."

Myron got up and moved back his chair.

"I don't think o' movin' till long about the middle o' May," he
rejoined. "You can kinder keep your mind on it and, when you get round
to your spring cleanin', pick up as you go. Some things you can fold
right into chists, blankets and winter clo'es, and then you won't have
to handle 'em over twice. If Herman comes back from gettin' the horse
shod, you tell him to take an axe, and come down where I be in the long
lot, fencin'. I want him."

He paused for a hearty draught from the dipper at the pump, pulled his
hat on tightly, and went out through the shed to his forenoon's work.
Mrs. Dill rose from her seat, and stepped quickly to the window to
watch him away. She often did it when he had most puzzled her and roused
in her a resistance which was inevitable, she knew by long experience,
but also, as her dutiful nature agreed, the result in her of an
unconquerable old Adam which had never yet felt the transforming touch
of grace. When his tall, powerful figure had disappeared beyond the rise
at the end of the lot, she gave a great willful sigh, as if