g up until
they marry the others off; so Maria could part with her in the light of a
favour to them, don't you see, without spilling blood. Peysey'll have to
have some sort of a chaser, though, or Maria'll not hear of it."

Mr. Vanderveer glowed all over with delight when father condemned the
automobile as a nerve racker, and suggested that a young man of the
companionable tutor order, who could either play games, fish, and drive
with the boy and his chums, or at times leave him wholly alone, according
to need, would be a good substitute for a woman who viewed life as a
school of don'ts, and had either wholly outlived her youth, or else had
most unpleasant recollections of it.

"I've got my innings at last," he said. "You're the first doctor I've had
who hasn't sided with Maria and shut me out until pay day."

"I wonder why spring is such a restless season," I said half to myself
and half to father, as I sat on the porch half an hour later, trying to
focus my mind on writing to Lavinia Dorman, while father, lounging on the
steps opposite, was busy reading his mail.

"One would think we might be content merely to throw off winter and look
and enjoy, but no, every one is restless,--birds, fourfoots, and humans.
Lavinia Dorman writes that Sylvia Latham has just started for California
to see her brother, and she expects to bring her father back with her.
The boys disappeared mysteriously in the direction of Martha Corkle's
immediately after breakfast, Evan went reluctantly to the train,
declaring that it seemed impossible to sit still long enough to reach the
city, you are twisting about and shuffling your feet, looking far oftener
at the river woods than at your letters, and as for myself, it seems as
if I must go over yonder and seize Bertel's spade and show him how to dig
those seed beds more rapidly, so that I can begin to plant and kneel down
and get close to the ground. Yesterday when the boys came in with very
earthy faces, and I questioned them, I found that they had stuck their
precious noses in their mud pies, essaying to play mole and burrow
literally."

"It is the same mystery as the sweating of the corn," replied father,
gathering his letters in a heap and tossing them into a chair with a
gesture of impatience; "none of us may escape, even though we do not
understand it.

"It was years ago that I first heard the legend from an old farmer of the
corn belt, who, longing for a sight of salt water, had drifte