him the noon
whistle from the village blew and the wise old horses stopped in the
middle of a furrow. 'Niram unharnessed them, led them to the shade of a
tree, and put on their nose-bags. Then he turned and came toward the
house.

"Don't I seem to remember," murmured my cousin under his breath, "that,
even though he is a New-Englander, he has been known to make up errands
to your kitchen to see your pretty Ev'leen Ann?"

I looked at him hard; but he was only gazing down, rather cross-eyed, on
his grizzled mustache, with an obvious petulant interest in the increase
of white hairs in it. Evidently his had been but a chance shot. 'Niram
stepped up on the grass at the edge of the porch. He was so tall that he
overtopped the railing easily, and, reaching a long arm over to where I
sat, he handed me a small package done up in yellowish tissue-paper.
Without hat-raisings, or good-mornings or any other of the greetings
usual in a more effusive civilization, he explained briefly:

"My stepmother wanted I should give you this. She said to thank you for
the grape-juice." As he spoke he looked at me gravely out of deep-set
blue eyes, and when he had delivered his message he held his peace.

I expressed myself with the babbling volubility of one whose manners
have been corrupted by occasional sojourns in the city. "Oh, 'Niram!" I
cried protestingly, as I opened the package and took out an exquisitely
wrought old-fashioned collar. "Oh, 'Niram! How _could_ your stepmother
give such a thing away? Why, it must be one of her precious old relics.
I don't _want_ her to give me something every time I do some little
thing for her. Can't a neighbor send her in a few bottles of grape-juice
without her thinking she must pay it back somehow? It's not kind of her.
She has never yet let me do the least thing for her without repaying me
with something that is worth ever so much more than my trifling
services."

When I had finished my prattling, 'Niram repeated, with an accent of
finality, "She wanted I should give it to you."

The older man stirred in his chair. Without looking at him I knew that
his gaze on the young rustic was quizzical and that he was recording on
the tablets of his merciless memory the ungraceful abruptness of the
other's action and manner.

"How is your stepmother feeling to-day, 'Niram?" I asked.

"Worse."

'Niram came to a full stop with the word. My cousin covered his
satirical mouth with his hand.

"Can't the