gaunt,
loose-jointed figure stride out into the sunshine and disappear behind
the corner of the house.

What a day it was! From beneath the lattice that arched the entrance
to the cottage and supported a rambler rose bursting into bloom she
could see the bay, blue as a sapphire and scintillating with ripples of
gold. A weather-stained scow was making its way out of the channel,
and above it circled a screaming cloud of tern that had been routed
from their nesting place on the margin of white sand that bordered the
path to the open sea. Mingling with their cries and the rhythmic
pulsing of the surf, the clear voices of the men aboard the tug reached
her ear. It was flood tide, and the water that surged over the bar
stained its reach of pearl to jade green and feathered its edges with
snowy foam.

It was no weather to be cooped up indoors doing housework.

Idly Celestina loitered, drinking in the beauty of the scene. The
languor of summer breathed in the gentle, pine-scented air and rose
from the warm earth of the garden. Voluptuously she stretched her arms
and yawned; then straightening to her customary erectness she went into
the house, being probably the only woman in Wilton who that morning had
abandoned her domestic duties long enough to take into her soul the
benediction of the world about her.

It was such detours from the path of duty that had helped to win for
Celestina her pseudonym of "easy goin'." Perhaps this very vagrant
quality in her nature was what had aided her in so thoroughly
sympathizing with Willie in his sporadic outbursts of industry. For
Willie was not a methodical worker any more than was Celestina. There
were intervals, it is true, when he toiled steadily, feverishly, all
day long and far into the night, forgetting either to eat or sleep;
then would follow days together when he simply pottered about, or did
even worse and remained idle in the sunny shelter of the grape arbor.
Here on a rude bench constructed from a discarded four-poster he would
often sit for hours, smoking his corncob pipe and softly humming to
himself; but when genius went awry and his courage was at a low ebb,
strings, wires, and pulleys having failed to work, he would neither
smoke nor sing, but with eyes on the distance would sit immovable as if
carved from stone.

To-day, however, was not one of his "settin' days." He had been up
since dawn, had eaten no breakfast, and had even been too deeply
preoccupied