asked Mrs. Hildreth, coming out on the porch, looking warm and tired.
"I declare, every summer I say I'll have the baker stop here," she
added. "I get so sick of baking my own bread when it's warm."

She did not sit down, but stood poised on the top step. Jack who had
risen with the rest, kept one hand stiffly away from his body.

"What were you saying, Richard?" asked Mrs. Hildreth again.

"Oh, I was day-dreaming I guess," Richard answered. "I said that when
Warren and I have our own farm, perhaps we'll have time to do some of
the things we have always wanted to do."

Mrs. Hildreth mopped her flushed face with a handkerchief of generous
size.

"Well, you won't," she prophesied. "I never knew anyone who lived on a
farm to have a minute's time for anything but the hardest kind of work.
Even in winter when the crops are in, there's wood to get out and cut
and the animals to be fed and bedded down and the fires to look after
and paths to be opened and the milking to be done. It's one thing
after another, all the year round."

Richard put one arm around the porch pillar.

"It could be different," he insisted. "For instance, you could buy
bread--you just said so. That would save you some time."

"Which I should feel duty-bound to use in canning more fruit,"
countered Mrs. Hildreth promptly. "I'm not so keen on work, but the
way I'm made, I feel guilty if I waste a half hour."

"It isn't wasting time to have a little enjoyment and leisure," Richard
declared doggedly. "Is it, Jack?"

Jack a moment before had struck his hand against the porch railing, a
light tap, scarcely to be noticed. But his face was white as he turned
savagely on Richard.

"Work is the only thing that counts and you know it," he said fiercely.
"The crops and the crops alone, are to be considered. If you kill
yourself getting them in, that's a small matter; next year someone else
will plant 'em again and perhaps kill himself, too."

"Dear me, Jack, maybe you have a little touch of the sun," said Mrs.
Hildreth. "I think the doctor had better give you something to make
you sleep. You will, won't you, Doctor Willis?" the good woman urged
anxiously.

"I'm all right," said Jack.

"Well, I'm sure I hope so," she returned in a voice that was far from
sounding convinced. "Mr. Hildreth had a brother who had a sunstroke
once and he wasn't right for years. Were you working in a blaze
to-day, Jack?"

"He wore a hat," said Richard quic