me. Haven't you heard how dangerous
it is to set such a supper as this before a man who is perishing with
hunger? Have you no mercy for me?"

This remark produced the most extraordinary effect. Harriet was at that
moment standing in the corner near the pump. Her shoulders suddenly
began to shake convulsively.

"She's so glad I'm home that she can't help laughing," I thought, which
shows how penetrating I really am.

She was crying.

"Why, Harriet!" I exclaimed.

"Hungry!" she burst out, "and j-joking about it!"

I couldn't say a single word; something--it must have been a piece of
the rhubarb pie--stuck in my throat. So I sat there and watched her
moving quietly about in that immaculate kitchen. After a time I walked
over to where she stood by the table and put my arm around her quickly.
She half turned her head, in her quick, businesslike way. I noted how
firm and clean and sweet her face was.

"Harriet," I said, "you grow younger every year."

No response.

"Harriet," I said, "I haven't seen a single person anywhere on my
journey that I like as much as I do you."

The quick blood came up.

"There--there--David!" she said.

So I stepped away.

"And as for rhubarb pie, Harriet--"

When I first came to my farm years ago there were mornings when I woke
up with the strong impression that I had just been hearing the most
exquisite sounds of music. I don't know whether this is at all a common
experience, but in those days (and farther back in my early boyhood) I
had it frequently. It did not seem exactly like music either, but was
rather a sense of harmony, so wonderful, so pervasive that it cannot
be described. I have not had it so often in recent years, but on the
morning after I reached home it came to me as I awakened with a strange
depth and sweetness. I lay for a moment there in my clean bed. The
morning sun was up and coming in cheerfully through the vines at the
window; a gentle breeze stirred the clean white curtains, and I could
smell even there the odours of the garden.

I wish I had room to tell, but I cannot, of all the crowded experiences
of that day--the renewal of acquaintance with the fields, the cattle,
the fowls, the bees, of my long talks with Harriet and Dick Sheridan,
who had cared for my work while I was away; of the wonderful visit of
the Scotch Preacher, of Horace's shrewd and whimsical comments upon the
general absurdity of the head of the Grayson family--oh, of a thousand
thing