f blue serge and her $2.99 pongee
blouse proclaimed her as a working girl of the mill city. "I've been to
Hampton," he declared, just as though it were four thousand miles away
instead of four.

"But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the
same spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a
beautiful place as this!"

"Yes, it is nice," he agreed. "We have our troubles, too,--but it's
nice."

She ventured a second, appraising glance. His head, which he carried a
little flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these
contradicted the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck,
the khaki trousers still bearing the price tag. And curiosity beginning
to get the better of her, she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the
fence. If one had to work, it must be a pleasure to work on things
pleasing to the eye--such was her inference.

"Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily. "I was just hoping some
one would come along here and admire it. Now--what colour would you paint
it?"

"Are you a painter, too?"

"After a fashion. I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting it
white, with the pillars green."

"I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a
moment's thought. "What else can you do?"

He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments.

"Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the
magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse.
"I put in those patches."

"They're cement," she exclaimed. "I never heard of putting cement in
trees."

"They don't seem to mind."

"Are the holes very deep?"

"Pretty deep."

"But I should think the tree would be dead."

"Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark. If you can
keep the outer covering intact, the tree will live."

"Why did you let the holes get so deep?"

"I've just come here. The house was like the tree the shingles all
rotten, but the beams were sound. Those beams were hewn out of the forest
two hundred and fifty years ago."

"Gracious!" said Janet. "And how old is the tree?"

"I should say about a hundred. I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it."

"How do you know?" she inquired.

"Oh, I'm very intimate with trees. I find out their secrets."

"It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery.

"Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an
in