es, I remember him." An abrupt movement on Persis' part had
unthreaded her needle. She bent close to the lamp, vainly trying to
insert the unsteady end of the thread into the opening it had so lately
quitted.

"I've been telling you right along you needed glasses," triumphed Joel.
"And to keep on saying that you don't, ain't going to help the matter.
'When age, old age comes creeping on,' as the poet says--"

"I don't need glasses any more than you need a crutch." The denial
came out with a snap. Persis Dale, patient to the point of weakness,
enduring submissively for twenty years the thankless exactions of her
brother, proved herself wholesomely human by her prompt resentment.
"My eyes are as good as they ever were," she insisted, and closed the
discussion if she did not prove her point, by putting her work away.
Secretary of an investment company making such golden promises! That
looked as if at last fortune had smiled on Justin Ware.

The two men had the talk to themselves. Persis' absorption was
penetrated now and then by references to the miracles wrought by
scientific spraying and pruning, or the possibility of heating orchards
so that late frosts would no longer have terrors for the fruit grower,
sober facts which the literature of the Apple of Eden Investment
Company had enveloped in the rosy atmosphere of romance. Like many
people who have never made money by hard work, Joel believed profoundly
in making it by magic. His pallid face flushed feverishly, and his
eyes glittered as he discussed the possibility of making a thousand
dollars double itself in a year.

It was ten o'clock when Thomas again had the field to himself and in
Clematis only sentimental visits were prolonged beyond that hour.
Thomas' opportunity had arrived, but with it unluckily had come the
recollection of a misdeed for which he must receive absolution before
the flood-gates of his heart were opened.

"Persis, do you remember that old Baptist minister who lived opposite
the schoolhouse when we were kids? Elder Buck, everybody called him."

With an effort she set aside her own recollections in favor of his.
"Oh, yes, I remember. The one whose false teeth were always slipping
down."

"His picket fence was all torn to pieces one night. He had a way of
calling names in the pulpit, the elder had,--children of the devil and
that sort of thing--and it got some of the boys riled. And to pay him
back, they tore down his fence. Per