for you, and
then----"

"Cut out the poetry stuff," said Annie. "It ain't past noon yet."

"I ain't had time to build my own house over yet. Pianny and all gone
now, though."

"Gee, but you do lie easy," said Annie. "You're the smoothest running
liar I ever did see."

"And all my books and things, and pictures and dishes."

"All of your both two tin plates, huh?"

"And my other suits of clothes, and my bedstead, and my dewingport, and
everything--all, all gone, Miss Squires!"

"Is that so! Oh, sad! sad! You must of been reading some of them mail
order catalogues in your dreams."

"And my cook stove too. I've just been cooking out in the open air
when I couldn't stand your cooking here no more--out of doors, like I
was camping out."

"If any sheep herder was ever worse than you two, God help him! You
wasn't one of you fit for her to wipe a foot on,--that doctor least of
all, that got me out here under pretences that she was married happy.
And I find her married to that! I wish to God she could see all this,
and see you all, for just one minute. Just once, that's all!"

"Yes," said Wid Gardner, suddenly serious. "I know. There ain't
nothing I can do to square it. But all I've got or expect to
have--why, it's free for you to take along and do anything you can for
her and your own self, Miss Annie, if you want to, even if you do go
away and leave us.

"But look at my land over there." He swept a long arm toward the
waving grasses of the valley. "I've got my land all clear. She's
worth fifty a acre as she lays, and'll be worth a hundred and fifty
when I get water out of the creek on to her. I got three hundred and
twenty acres under fence. I been saving the money the Doc's paying me
here.

"Say," he added, presently, "what kind of a place is that Niagry place
I been reading about? Is it far from Cleveland?"

"Not so very," replied Annie to his sudden and irrelevant query.

"It's a great place for young married folks to go and visit, I reckon?
I was reading about in a book onct, before my books was burned up.
Seems like it was called 'A Chanct Acquaintance.' Ever since, I
allowed I'd go to Niagry on my wedding journey."

"Well," said Annie, judicially, "I been around some, what with
floor-walkers and foremen and men in the factory, but I'm going to say
that when it comes to chanct acquaintances, this here place has got 'em
faded for suddenness! Go on over home and rub your eyes and wake