er chair, and began to talk at random.

"So this is where you live. It's lovely. It looks like a fairy
story--the little house in the wood, you know--nothing seems real
to-day--the woods--it makes me want to cry, they are so beautiful. I've
been wondering and wondering what outdoors was looking like. You know
poor Mother is sick, and though she's not so awfully sick, and of course
we've a trained nurse for her, still I've had to be housekeeper and I
haven't had time to breathe. The second girl left right off because of
the extra work she thought sickness would make, but it seems to me we've
had a million new second girls in the three weeks. It's been awful! I
haven't had time to get out at all or to see anybody."

She was quite herself now, and confided her troubles with a naive
astonishment, as though they were new to humanity.

"Yes; I've heard ladies say before that it's quite awful," agreed her
companion gravely. He swung himself up to sit on his work-bench, his
long legs stretched before him, just reaching the ground. "Envy me," he
went on, smiling; "I don't have to have a second girl, or a first one,
either."

"What _do_ you do?" asked Lydia, not waiting, however, for an answer,
but continuing her relieved outpouring of her own perplexities. "It's
perfectly desperate at home. I haven't had a minute's peace. This
afternoon I just got wild, and said I _would_ get away from it for a
minute, and just ran away. Father's nice about it, but he does look
something fierce when he comes home and finds another one left. He says
that Mother doesn't have to change more than two or three times a year!"
She presented this as the superlative of stability.

Rankin laughed again. Lydia felt more and more at her ease. He was
evidently thinking of her pretty looks and ways rather than of what she
was saying, and, like all of her sisterhood, this was treatment which
she thoroughly understood. For the moment she forgot that he was the man
who had startled and almost shocked her by his unabashed presentation,
in a conversation with a young lady, of ideas and convictions. She
leaned back in her chair and put on some of the gracefully imperious
airs of regnant American young-ladyhood. "You must show me all about how
you live, and everything," she commanded prettily. "I've been so curious
about it--and now here I am."

She was enchantingly unconscious of the possibility of her having seemed
to seek him out. "What a perfectly beautifu