eart, ill versed as I was in such things, that I should never send her
such a gift myself. I would climb to the top of Gander Knob for a wild
rose or rhododendron; I would stir the leaves from the gap to the river
in search of a simple spray of arbutus for her. But step before her
with my arms clasping a tin can with a geranium plant r Heaven forbid!
Perry was different. The suggestion pleased him. He was rubbing his
hands and smiling in great contentment.

"I might send a po-em with it," he said. "I've allus found that poetry
kind of catches ahold of a girl when you are away. It keeps you in her
mind. It must be sing-song, though, kind of gettin' into her head like
quinine. It must keep time with the splashin' of the churn and the
howlin' of the wind. I mind when I was keepin' company with Rhoda
Spiker--she afterward married Ulysses G. Harmon, of Hopedale--I sent
her a po-em that run somethin' like this: 'I live, I love, my Life, my
Light; long love I thou, Sweetheart so bright'----"

Perry's po-em never got into my brain, for as he repeated the
captivating lines, I was gazing over his shoulder, out of the window,
down the road to the village. I saw a girl on the store porch,
standing by the door a moment as if undecided which way to go. Then
she turned her head into the November gale and came rapidly up the
road. In a minute more she would be passing the school-house door.
Tim's letter was in my pocket and the sun was still high over the gable
of the mill.

[Illustration: I saw a girl on the store porch.]

"Rhoda sent me a postal asking me to write her a po-em full of Ks or Xs
or Ws, just so as she could get the Ls out of her head, and----"

"Perry!" I broke right into his story and seized the lapel of his
waistcoat as though he were my dearest friend. "My girl is going by
the school-house door this very minute. Now you help me. Take the
school for the rest of the afternoon."

"Your girl?" cried Perry. His voice broke from the smothered
conference tone and the school heard it and tittered. He recovered
himself and poked me in the chest.

"Oh!" he said, "Widow Spoonholler--I seen you last Sunday singin' often
the same book--I seen you. Hurry, Mark, hurry; and luck to you!
You've done me most a mighty good turn."

X

Mary sat knitting. Beware of a woman who knits. The keenest lawyer in
our county is not so clever a cross-examiner as his sister when she
sits with her needles and yarn