th horrid
about. I asked you to tell me about it, and you--"

He remembered, evidently with an amusement not entirely free from
annoyance. "Oh, I'm safe. I'll never see you to tell you."

She sat down on the bottom step and drew her white skirts about her.
"What's the matter with right now?" she asked, smiling.

"I've got to earn my living right now," he objected, beginning with a
swift deftness to bore a tiny hole.

She was diverted for an instant. "What are you doing to our nice old
newel-post?" she asked. "I thought they said you were going to set up
the new sideboard."

"Oh, that's no job at all; it's done. Didn't you hear me pushing and
banging things around? Now I've the job before me of fitting the very
latest thing in newel-posts in place of your old one."

The girl returned to her first attack. "Well, anyhow, if it's a long
job, it's all the better. Go ahead and talk at the same time. You won't
feel you're wasting time."

Their low-toned talk and the glimmering light of the hall made them seem
oddly intimate. Lydia expressed this feeling while Rankin stood looking
doubtfully at her, a little daunted by the pretty relentlessness of her
insistence. "You see, you're not nearly so much a stranger to me as I am
to you. Remember how I sewed and listened. I'm a grown-up little
pitcher, and my ears are still large. I was remembering just now, before
you came in, how strangely you used to talk to Dr. Melton, and I thought
it wasn't so surprising, after all, your doing 'most anything queer."

Rankin laughed as he bent over his tools. "Little pitchers have tongues,
too, I see."

Either Lydia felt herself more familiar with her interlocutor than
before, or one result of her meditation had been the loss of her
excessive fear of wounding his feelings. She spoke now quite
confidently, "But, honestly, what in the world did you do it for?"

"It?" He made her define herself.

"Oh, you know! Give up everything--lose your chance in society, and poke
off into the woods to be a common--" In spite of her new boldness she
faltered here.

He supplied the word, with a flash of mirth. "Don't be afraid to say it
right out--even such an awful term as workman, or carpenter. I can bear
it."

"I knew it!" Lydia exclaimed. "As I was thinking it over on the stairs
just now, I said to myself that probably you weren't a bit apologetic
about it; probably you had some queer reason for being proud of yourself
for doing it."

He ca