ms
did not understand where this point ended.

Like a long tallow candle slowly melting from the heat, the young man
was now lolling idly on the narrow circular bench of the summer house
appearing so limp and dispirited that he seemed incapable of any kind of
opposition.

Would the afternoon never pass? Could he ever remember having been
forced to remain so long in the society of any one woman? So long that
he ceased to have anything he desired to say or any possible idea that
he wished to express; indeed his mind felt as clean and empty as a slate
wiped by a wet rag. Why in heaven's name didn't Peachy herself have
something to say once in a while? Before this day his calls had been
short evening ones, when he had had opinions of his own and to spare.
Could the time ever come in a man's life when he might want a girl to be
inspiration as well as audience, to have an idea of her own now and
then?

"Oh, Lord," Ambrose groaned half aloud. If only he could think of some
plan of escape, but in the rash enthusiasm of his arrival at the farm
had he not promised Peachy to remain all day? And now in his exhausted
condition even his imagination had deserted him. Certainly he could
think of no excuse for getting away at once.

Yet more and more depressing were Peachy's long silences, her frequent
laugh more irritating, since Ambrose could find no reasonable excuse for
laughter in the dulness of the interminable May afternoon with nothing
to look at but the ground at his feet, or the lacing of leaves overhead,
except Peachy, stitching, stitching everlastingly on something so white
and weblike that Ambrose felt he too was being sewed in, made prisoner
for life.

His long legs twitched, fairly his body ached with his longing to be
off, until by and by even the girl was made to realize that things were
not going as she had reasonably expected.

"What is it ails you this afternoon, Ambrose?" she asked at last,
wistful if he had but known it. "Wasn't there something special you
wanted to say to me to-day, else why did you come so out of your regular
time?"

"Why had he come?" Barely was Ambrose able to repress another groan.
For the life of him he could not now have told what had drawn him that
morning to the Red Farm. Whatever desires or emotions had then stirred
him were gone, his head was heavy, his blood moved languidly, even the
necessary domestic noises of farm life were inexpressibly annoying.
Could Peachy ever have spe