ow dreadful!"

"An' pa, he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to
wait on table."

"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as
she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.

V

Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him.
He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task, and was just about
ready to go when Lily spoke to him.

"Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It
must be time to go to dinner,--aren't you ready to go? I want to talk
with you."

Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down
the road with the schoolma'am, but there was something in her look which
seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he
was not in good humor.

"Yes, in a minnit--soon's I fix up this hole. Them shotes, I b'lieve,
would go through a keyhole, if they could once get their snoots in."

He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He
foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet and
fragile girl. If a _man_ had dared to attack him on his domestic
shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her
large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow
of her broad-brimmed hat.

"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we
can to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her
thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to
him strongly, and never more so than in this softly uttered
abstraction--that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.

He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box,
and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her
talk.

"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies. Surely we ought to bear
with our--friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his. He took off
his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much
embarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept
silent.

"How _is_ Mrs. Burns!" said Lily at length, determined to make him
speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on _is_ did not escape
him.

"Oh, she's all right--I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever.
I don't see her much--"

"I didn't know--I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting
strangely."

"