lilies and Japan lilies and clove-pinks still remained in their school
of bloom.

Benny often stood still, wiped his forehead, leaned on his rake, and
inhaled the bouquet of sweet scents, but Annie raked with never-ceasing
energy. Annie was small and slender and wiry, and moved with angular
grace, her thin, peaked elbows showing beneath the sleeves of her pink
gingham dress, her thin knees outlining beneath the scanty folds of the
skirt. Her neck was long, her shoulder-blades troubled the back of
her blouse at every movement. She was a creature full of ostentatious
joints, but the joints were delicate and rhythmical and charming. Annie
had a charming face, too. It was thin and sunburnt, but still charming,
with a sweet, eager, intent-to-please outlook upon life. This last was
the real attitude of Annie's mind; it was, in fact, Annie. She was
intent to please from her toes to the crown of her brown head. She
radiated good will and loving-kindness as fervently as a lily in the
border radiated perfume.

It was very warm, and the northwest sky had a threatening mountain
of clouds. Occasionally Annie glanced at it and raked the faster, and
thought complacently of the water-proof covers in the little barn. This
hay was valuable for the Reverend Silas's horse.

Two of the front windows of the house were filled with girls' heads, and
the regular swaying movement of white-clad arms sewing. The girls sat in
the house because it was so sunny on the piazza in the afternoon. There
were four girls in the sittingroom, all making finery for themselves.
On the other side of the front door one of the two windows was blank; in
the other was visible a nodding gray head, that of Annie's father taking
his afternoon nap.

Everything was still except the girls' tongues, an occasional burst of
laughter, and the crackling shrill of locusts. Nothing had passed on the
dusty road since Benny and Annie had begun their work. Lynn Corners was
nothing more than a hamlet. It was even seldom that an automobile got
astray there, being diverted from the little city of Anderson, six miles
away, by turning to the left instead of the right.

Benny stopped again and wiped his forehead, all pink and beaded with
sweat. He was a pretty young man--as pretty as a girl, although large.
He glanced furtively at Annie, then he went with a soft, padding glide,
like a big cat, to the piazza and settled down. He leaned his head
against a post, closed his eyes, and i