with the debris from a recent
drilling. The McCallum house--her father's--stood at the other end of
the row of maples on the same side of the street as the meeting house
and a hundred yards or so distant. There was quite an expanse of
greening lawn in front and to the south, whereon stood the
summerhouse, and a tangle of rose bushes hid the decaying board fence
which marked the southern boundary. Along the brick sidewalk stretched
a line of ageing wooden pickets and about midway in their extent hung
the wooden gate with the screak. The house was frame, low and
wide-stretching, with an inviting verandah about a cavernous front
door that was dark and rarely open. People used the side door into the
ell sitting room, and the brick walk leading in a curved sweep to this
doorway was free from grass. A high wooden lattice separated the front
lawn from the backyard and sheds and stables, and about this lattice
sprawled in luxuriant freedom rose vines and honeysuckle, just now
faintly budding into life.

Mary Louise stooped and punched a hole in the soft earth with a little
stick, unconsciously uprooting a tender shoot thereby. A black beetle
came scurrying out of the decaying baseboard at this disturbance and
was summarily filliped off into the greening wastes of lawn.
Collecting herself, she next inspected the branches of the plant near
by and finding sufficient promise of green, straightened up and flung
back an escaping wisp of hair, with a sigh.

There was nothing particularly noticeable about Mary Louise unless it
might possibly be a certain fine-drawnness. Her eyes, which were
brown, had a sort of set focus on the immediate, and there were some
fine lines from the corners of her lips to her nose. She was slim and
straight, with small hands and feet, and her arms, which were bare to
the elbow, might have been soft and round, were it not for a sinuous
tension that showed itself in little corded creases right where a
girl's arms should be softest and roundest. And her hair had a way of
coming down at all times and in all weathers. It had never been
decided whether she were pretty or not. That was something that had
never mattered--to her, at least.

As she threw back her head she was conscious of a general escaping of
hairpins and a loosening of hair. With a frown she dropped her stick
and turned her attention from horticulture to coiffure. A low whistle
sounded from somewhere beyond the rose vines, and as she turned, wi