a dream.

"And the others have married and got children growing up," he mused.
"Seems if we'd missed the best of it."

They had risen and stood facing each other, Marietta with the basket in
her hand. Jerry took it gently from her and set it on the ground.

"Marietta," he said, "I guess I'm kind of waked up."

Her face quivered. He thought he had never seen her look exactly that
way before.

"I'd work terrible hard," said he. "I guess I could make you have an
easier time."

Then his appealing eyes met hers, and Marietta, because she had no wish
to deny him anything, gave him her hands, and they kissed soberly.

When they walked back to the road, Jerry drew her aside to the birches
on the sunny knoll.

"You mustn't lay it up against me," he said brokenly.

"Lay what up?"

Her lips were full and lovely, and her eyes shone with the one look of
happiness.

"It's spring with these." He pointed to the birches. "It ain't with us."

"I don't know." Marietta laughed willfully. "Ain't you ever seen an
apple-tree blooming in the fall? or a late rose? Well, I have. So,
there!"

To Jerry, looking at her, she seemed like a beautiful stranger, met in
the way, and he kissed her again.

When they were driving home in their sober intimacy that had yet an
undercurrent of that rushing river of life, Marietta turned suddenly to
him.

"Jerry," she said, "when you played croquet, who beat?"

His eyes, meeting hers, took the merry challenge of them and answered
it. They both began to laugh, ecstatically, like children.

"She did," said he.

THE MASTER MINDS OF HISTORY

"What's that dry-goods case in the front entry?" asked Elihu Meade.

He had sunk into his particular chair by the kitchen stove, and was
drawing off his boots with the luxurious slowness of one whose day's
work is done and who may sit by expectant while fragrant warm delights
are simmering for supper. His wife, Amarita by name, stood at the stove,
piloting apple turnovers in a pool of fat. At a first glance she and her
husband seemed an ill-matched pair, he with a thin face and precise
patch of whisker at the ear, a noticeable and general meagreness of
build, and she dark and small, with a face flashing vivid intelligence.
Elihu's mother--a large, loosely made, blond old lady--sat by the
window, out of range of the lamplight even, knitting by feeling, and
doubling her pleasures through keeping her glance out of the window,
where a new moon hun