ve done some
little thing to pay you back."

"I'm not sure that was very happily expressed. Is it painful to feel
that you owe anything to your neighbors?"

George flushed.

"That wasn't what I meant. Do you think it's quite fair to lay traps
for me, when you can count on my falling into them?" He turned and
pointed to the great stretch of grain that clothed the soil with vivid
green. "Look at your work. Last fall, all that plowing was strewn
with a wrecked and mangled crop; now it's sown with wheat that will
stand the drought. I was feeling nearly desperate, wondering how I was
to master the sandy waste, when you came to the rescue and my troubles
melted like the dust in summer rain. They couldn't stand before you;
you banished them."

She looked at him rather curiously, and, George thought, with some
cause, for he was a little astonished at his outbreak. This was not
the kind of language that was most natural to him.

"I wonder," she said, "why you should take so much for granted--I mean
in holding me accountable?"

"It's obvious," George declared. "I understand your father; he's a
very generous friend, but the idea of sending me the seed didn't occur
to him in the first place; though I haven't the least doubt that he was
glad to act on it."

"Ah!" said Flora, "it looks as if you had been acquiring some
penetration; you were not so explicit the last time you insisted on
thanking me. Who can have been teaching you? It seems, however, that
I'm still incomprehensible."

George considered. It would be undesirable to explain that his
enlightenment had come from Edgar, and he wanted to express what he
felt.

"No," he said, in answer to her last remark; "not altogether; but I've
sometimes felt that there's a barrier of reserve in you, beyond which
it's hard to get."

"Do you think it would be worth while to make the attempt? Suppose you
succeeded and found there was nothing on the other side?"

He made a sign of negation, and she watched him with some interest; the
man was trying to thrash out his ideas.

"That couldn't happen," he declared gravely. "Somehow you make one
feel there is much in you that wants discovery, but that one will learn
it by and by. After all, it's only the shallow people you never really
get to know."

"It would seem an easy task, on the face of it."

"As a matter of fact, it isn't. They have a way of enveloping
themselves in an air of importance and mystery, and wh