had seen immodesty. She possessed a knowledge that was a better
safeguard than mere innocence, and her passion illumined her virtue.

They strolled among the trees, society's forest; they listened co the
ducks and the geese, the city's barnyard.

"Would you rather live in the country?" he asked.

"I would not rather teach art there," she laughed.

"It must be very hard."

"It is very stupid."

"I don't suppose the farmers take to it any too kindly."

"No, they often ask me why I do not draw comic as they see in the
newspapers."

"They must like to see themselves buying gold bricks."

She did not understand him, and he explained that the honest farmer
believing that a fortune was coming down the road to meet him, was the
prey of sharp swindlers who prowled about through the country. Steve
Hardy, one of the shrewdest men in the community, once had bought an
express package filled with worthless paper. It was a case of "honesty"
trying to beat the three-shell man at his own game. Ignorance always
credits itself with shrewdness. Industry is no sure sign of honesty.
"Worked like a thief" has become a saying. Smiling at his philosophy,
she said that he never could have learned it in a school.

"No," he replied. "In the school we are taught to believe in the true,
the beautiful, and the good; but in life we find that the true as we
learned it is often false, the beautiful painted, and the good bad."

"I would not have you think that," she said. "The beautiful is not
always painted." She stooped and picked up a maple leaf, blushed with
the rudeness of the frost. "This is not painted, and it is beautiful. It
was the cold that brought out its color. You must not be a--what would
you call it?"

"Cynic?"

"Yes. You must not be that. It is an acknowledgment of failure."

He took her hand, and they walked on among the trees. "You talk like a
virtue translated from a foreign tongue," he said. He called her a
heathen grace. She protested. She was a Christian, so devout that she
would have hung her head in the potato field had she heard the ringing
of the angelus. They saw a woman on a wheel, and he dropped her hand.
The woman waved at them, jumped off and came to meet them, smiling. It
was Mrs. Blakemore. "Oh, I am so surprised and delighted," she said,
shaking hands. "Why, how unexpected! You must come home with me. I don't
live far from here. Bobbie will be delighted to see you. He refuses to
go to school, and we wo