woman had been found.

"Oh, you can trust her all right, Bill. But to tell you the truth, I
don't believe you could trust the girl that has set her cap for you. Her
tongue's too slippery, and I said to myself that you'd better stick to
the Norwegian. I'm not stuck on foreigners myself. The girl I married
had a smack of the Canadian French about her. But Lord, she was putty.
You ought to have seen her eyes--black as a blackberry, and dancin' a
jig all the time. And they danced me out of the set, I tell you that. I
could have her again if I wanted her. But I don't exactly want her.
Would you, Bill?"

"I'd cut her throat."

"Say, you ought to see her throat, speakin' about throats. Puttiest
thing you ever seen in your life--white as snow----"

"With the pink of the sunset falling on it," said Milford, with his
gluttonous mind's eye upon the Norwegian's neck.

"If that ain't it, I'm the biggest liar that ever milked a cow. Just
exactly it. And yet you wouldn't advise me to take her again."

"I'd kick her downstairs," said Milford.

"Yes, that's all right, Bill; but it would save getting a divorce.
Still, my other girl's the thing. I can put confidence in her, and the
first one was tricky. I couldn't tell her a thing that wan't repeated.
I'll stand for anythin' sooner than bein' repeated all the time. How are
you gettin' along over at the house?"

Milford put him off with the remark that everything was all right so far
as he knew. A man may gabble of a love that is spreading over the
heart, but when it has gathered the whole world beneath its wings he is
more inclined to silence.

The hired man continued to talk. Before he met the freckled woman he had
looked forward to sixteen hours a day at eighteen dollars a month. He
had not dared to see the flush of the sunrise light his bedroom window,
except perhaps on some odd Sunday when he might steal the sweet essence
of a forbidden nap, but his "love" for that woman had promised him an
unbroken dream at dawn and a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs at eight.
After all, it was fortunate that the first woman had run away. She was
saucy and had made his heart laugh, at times, but he was a hired man
still, and the cold dew of the morning had cracked his rough boots and
caused his wet trousers to flap about his ankles.

"Bill," he asked, "do you ever expect to wear a boiled shirt all the
week and sleep till after sun-up?"

Milford had learned that this was the hired man's not