re were covered with silver palms. But the big, bright kitchen
was warm and cosy, and somehow seemed to David more tempting than ever
before, and that is saying a good deal. He had an uneasy feeling that
he had stayed long enough and ought to go. Josephine was knitting at a
long gray sock with doubly aggressive energy, and that was a sign that
she was talked out. As long as Josephine had plenty to say, her plump
white fingers, where her mother's wedding ring was lost in dimples,
moved slowly among her needles. When conversation flagged she fell to
her work as furiously as if a husband and half a dozen sons were
waiting for its completion. David often wondered in his secret soul
what Josephine did with all the interminable gray socks she knitted.
Sometimes he concluded that she put them in the home missionary
barrels; again, that she sold them to her hired man. At any rate, they
were very warm and comfortable looking, and David sighed as he thought
of the deplorable state his own socks were generally in.

When David sighed Josephine took alarm. She was afraid David was going
to have one of his attacks of foolishness. She must head him off
someway, so she rolled up the gray sock, stabbed the big pudgy ball
with her needles, and said she guessed she'd get the tea.

David got up.

"Now, you're not going before tea?" said Josephine hospitably. "I'll
have it all ready in no time."

"I ought to go home, I s'pose," said David, with the air and tone of a
man dallying with a great temptation. "Zillah'll be waiting tea for
me; and there's the stock to tend to."

"I guess Zillah won't wait long," said Josephine. She did not intend
it at all, but there was a certain scornful ring in her voice. "You
must stay. I've a fancy for company to tea."

David sat down again. He looked so pleased that Josephine went down on
her knees behind the stove, ostensibly to get a stick of firewood, but
really to hide her smile.

"I suppose he's tickled to death to think of getting a good square
meal, after the starvation rations Zillah puts him on," she thought.

But Josephine misjudged David just as much as he misjudged her. She
had really asked him to stay to tea out of pity, but David thought it
was because she was lonesome, and he hailed that as an encouraging
sign. And he was not thinking about getting a good meal either,
although his dinner had been such a one as only Zillah Hartley could
get up. As he leaned back in his cushioned chair