t out of Mrs. Crittenden's hands, "I
want to try it myself."

He felt an anticipatory impatience of Vincent's everlasting talk, to
which Mrs. Crittenden always had, of course, to give a polite attention;
and imitating as well as he could, the free, upward swing of his
neighbor, he began working off his impatience on the unresisting earth.
But he could not help hearing that, just as he expected, Vincent plunged
at once into his queer, abrupt talk. He always seemed to think he was
going right on with something that had been said before, but really, for
the most part, as far as Mr. Welles could see, what he said had nothing
to do with anything. Mrs. Crittenden must really be a very smart woman,
he reflected, to seem to know what he meant, and always to have an
answer ready.

Vincent, shaking his head, and looking hard at Mrs. Crittenden's rough
clothes and the handful of earth in her fingers, said with an air of
enforced patience with obvious unreasonableness, "You're on the wrong
track, you know. You're just all off. Of course with you it can't be
pose as it looks when other people do it. It must be simply
muddle-headed thinking."

He added, very seriously, "You infuriate me."

Mr. Welles, pecking feebly at the ground, the heavy mattock apparently
invested with a malicious life of its own, twisting perversely, heavily
lop-sided in his hands, thought that this did not sound like a polite
thing to say to a lady. And yet the way Vincent said it made it sound
like a compliment, somehow. No, not that; but as though it were awfully
important to him what Mrs. Crittenden did. Perhaps that counted as a
compliment.

He caught only a part of Mrs. Crittenden's answer, which she gave,
lightly laughing, as though she did not wish to admit that Vincent could
be so serious as he sounded. The only part he really heard was when she
ended, ". . . oh, if we are ever going to succeed in forcing order on the
natural disorder of the world, it's going to take everybody's shoulder
to the wheel. Women can't stay ornamental and leisurely, and elegant,
nor even always nice to look at."

Mr. Welles, amazed at the straining effort he needed to put forth to
manage that swing which Mrs. Crittenden did so easily, took less than
his usual small interest in the line of talk which Vincent was so fond
of springing on their neighbor. He heard him say, with his air of always
stating a foregone conclusion, something so admitted that it needed no
emphasi