filled that last box while he stood there in the doorway, stood off to
survey her work critically, and then picked up a hammer that lay on
the table and prepared to nail down the lid.

"I've hit my finger four times today," she apprised him between strokes
as she drove the first nail home. "Four times this afternoon--and always
the same finger, too!"

The very irrelevancy of the statement, coupled with her calm serenity,
was appalling to the old man. She didn't so much as lift her eyes when
she told him, but when the lid was fastened she whirled suddenly with
that impetuosity which always startled him more than a little, her
hands tightly clasped in front of her, and fairly beamed at him.

"There, that finishes everything--everything but the pots and pans,"
she cried. "And I'll need them a little longer, anyway, won't I? But
maybe I won't take them with me, either--they're pretty old and worn
out. What do you think?"

Old Jerry cleared his throat. He ignored her question.

"Ain't--ain't this a trifle sudden," he faltered--"jest a trifle?"

She shook her head again and laughed softly, as if from sheer joyous
excitement.

"No," she said. "No, I've been planning it for days and days--oh, for
more than a week!"

Then she seemed to catch for the first time the dreariness of his
whole attitude--the dejection of his spare angular body and
sparrowlike, anxious face.

"You're sorry I'm going," she accused him then, and she leaned toward
him a little, eyes quizzically half closed. "I knew you'd be sorry!"
And then, swiftly, "Aren't you?"

Old Jerry scraped first one foot and then the other.

"I reckon I be," he admitted faintly. "Kinda surprised, too. I--I
wa'n't exactly calculating on anything like this. It--it's kinda
thrown me off my reckonin'! Are you--are you figurin' on goin' right
away?"

Dryad spun about and threw her head far on one side to scan the whole
bare room.

"Tomorrow, maybe," she decided, when she turned back to him. "Or the
next day at the very latest. You see, everything is about ready now,
and there isn't any reason for me to stay, on and on, here--is
there?"

A little tired note crept into the last words, edging the question
with a suggestion of wistfulness. It was something not so very
different from that for which Old Jerry had been stubbornly waiting
throughout those entire two weeks, but he failed to catch it at that
moment. He had heard nothing but her statement that she meant to
re