growing amazement.

"Who is he?" she asked finally.

"My man!" answered Nancy Ellen, possessively, triumphantly.

Kate stared at her. "Honest to God?" she cried in wonderment.

"Honest!" said Nancy Ellen.

"Where on earth did you find him?" demanded Kate.

"Picked him out of the blackberry patch," said Nancy Ellen.

"Those darn blackberries are always late," said Kate, throwing the
picture back on the bureau. "Ain't that just my luck! You wouldn't
touch the raspberries. I had to pick them every one myself. But the
minute I turn my back, you go pick a man like that, out of the
blackberry patch. I bet a cow you wore your pink chambray, and carried
grandmother's old blue bowl."

"Certainly," said Nancy Ellen, "and my pink sun-bonnet. I think maybe
the bonnet started it."

Kate sat down limply on the first chair and studied the toes of her
shoes. At last she roused and looked at Nancy Ellen, waiting in
smiling complaisance as she returned the picture to her end of the
bureau.

"Well, why don't you go ahead?" cried Kate in a thick, rasping voice.
"Empty yourself! Who is he? Where did he come from? WHY was he IN
our blackberry patch? Has he really been to see you, and is he
courting you in earnest?--But of COURSE he is! There's the lilac bush,
the lawn-mower, the house to be painted, and a humdinger dress. Is he
a millionaire? For Heaven's sake tell me--"

"Give me some chance! I did meet him in the blackberry patch. He's a
nephew of Henry Lang and his name is Robert Gray. He has just finished
a medical course and he came here to rest and look at Hartley for a
location, because Lang thinks it would be such a good one. And since
we met he has decided to take an office in Hartley, and he has money to
furnish it, and to buy and furnish a nice house."

"Great Jehoshaphat!" cried Kate. "And I bet he's got wings, too! I do
have the rottenest luck!"

"You act for all the world as if it were a foregone conclusion that if
you had been here, you'd have won him!"

Nancy Ellen glanced in the mirror and smiled, while Kate saw the smile.
She picked up her comb and drew herself to full height.

"If anything ever was a 'foregone conclusion,'" she said, "it is a
'foregone conclusion' that if I HAD been here, I'd have picked the
blackberries, and so I'd have had the first chance at him, at least."

"Much good it would have done you!" cried Nancy Ellen. "Wait until he
comes, and you see him!"

"You may