ause--well, because I know very
well that Adam loves me."

"Well, bless my heart, you can't marry them both. You'd like all the
pears in the basket."

"No, mother, but I know how to choose. You see this bit of a flower,
dear."

"It's a common dog-rose."

"Well, where d'you think I found it?"

"In the hedge likely."

"No, but on my window-ledge."

"Oh, but when?"

"This morning. It was six when I got up, and there it lay fresh and
sweet, and new-plucked. 'Twas the same yesterday and the day before.
Every morning there it lies. It's a common flower, as you say, mother,
but it is not so common to find a man who'll break short his sleep day
after day just to show a girl that the thought of her is in his heart."

"And which was it?"

"Ah, if I knew! I think it's Elias. He's a poet, you know, and poets do
nice things like that."

"And how will you be sure?"

"I'll know before morning. He will come again, whichever it is. And
whichever it is he's the man for me. Did father ever do that for you
before you married?"

"I can't say he did, dear. But father was always a powerful heavy
sleeper."

"Well then, mother, you needn't fret any more about me, for as sure as I
stand here, I'll tell you to-morrow which of them it is to be."

That evening the farmer's daughter set herself to clearing off all those
odd jobs which accumulate in a large household. She polished the dark,
old-fashioned furniture in the sitting-room. She cleared out the cellar,
re-arranged the bins, counted up the cider, made a great cauldron full
of raspberry jam, potted, papered, and labelled it. Long after the whole
household was in bed she pushed on with her self-imposed tasks until the
night was far gone and she very spent and weary. Then she stirred up the
smouldering kitchen fire and made herself a cup of tea, and, carrying
it up to her own room, she sat sipping it and glancing over an old bound
volume of the _Leisure Hour_. Her seat was behind the little dimity
window curtains, whence she could see without being seen.

The morning had broken, and a brisk wind had sprung up with the dawn.
The sky was of the lightest, palest blue, with a scud of flying
white clouds shredded out over the face of it, dividing, coalescing,
overtaking one another, but sweeping ever from the pink of the east to
the still shadowy west. The high, eager voice of the wind whistled and
sang outside, rising from moan to shriek, and then sinking again to a
dull mutt