ril. The beautiful sounds
and changes in nature reminded her that it was time to do certain kinds
of work, and with her, work was alpha and omega. As her mother had
before her, she was inclined to be a house drudge rather than a
housewife. Thrift, neatness, order, marked the limits of her endeavor,
and she accomplished her tasks with the awkward, brisk directness
learned in her mother's kitchen. Only mind, imagination, and
refinement can embroider the homely details of life. Alida would learn
to do all that she had done, but the woman with a finer nature would do
it in a different way. Holcroft already knew he liked this way
although he could not define it to himself. Tired as he was when he
came home in the evening, his eyes would often kindle with pleasure at
some action or remark that interested him from its novelty. In spite
of his weariness and preoccupation, in spite of a still greater
obstacle--the inertia of a mind dulled by material life--he had begun
to consider Alida's personality for its own sake. He liked to watch
her, not to see what she did to his advantage, but how she did it. She
was awakening an agreeable expectancy, and he sometimes smilingly said
to himself, "What's next?"

"Oh, no!" he thought as he was milking the last cow, "I'd much rather
she'd take her own natural way in doing things. It would be easier for
her and it's her right and--and somehow I like her way just as I used
to like Bessie's ways. She isn't Bessie and never can be, and for some
reason I'd like her to be as different as possible."

Unconsciously and unintentionally, however, he had given Alida's
sensitive nature a slight wound. She felt that she had been told in
effect, "You can help me all you please, and I would rather you would
do this in a way that will not awaken associations, but you must not
think of me or expect me to think of you in any light that was not
agreed upon." That he had feared the possibility of this, that he
might have fancied he saw indications of this, hurt her pride--that
pride and delicacy of feeling which most women shield so instinctively.
She was now consciously on her guard, and so was not so secure against
the thoughts she deprecated as before. In spite of herself, a
restraint would tinge her manner which he would eventually feel in a
vague, uncomfortable way.

But he came in at last, very tired and thoroughly good-natured. "I'm
going to town tomorrow," he said, "and I thought of t