ation, the dislocated joint of utterance.
She would have welcomed track talk with a race-horse starter. And the
bluntness of this man from the hillside was invigorating. His words
were not dry herbs, but fresh pennyroyal, sharp with scent. Milford
smiled at her, wishing that she were locked among her husband's jars of
pickled atrocities. He wanted to talk silliness with the girl.

The other boarders came out, George and his wife among them. George
handed Milford a cigar, telling him to light it,--that the ladies did
not object to smoking.

"You haven't asked them," said his wife.

"Well, I know they don't."

"There, don't you see? Mrs. Dorch is moving off."

George grinned. "Her husband is a great smoker, and she don't want to be
reminded of home," he said.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she replied.

"I can't afford it. I'm too much loser."

Mrs. Goodwin asked Gunhild to walk with her. She looked at Milford, but
he lost his nerve and did not offer to go with them.

"That was a bid," said George. His wife reprimanded him. "It is a wonder
you didn't offer to go," she declared. "But let us take a walk," she
added.

"Too soon after eating. Believe I'll go up and take a snooze," he said.

A mother, worn out with hot nights of worrying over the ills of a
teething child, sat rocking the little one. Bobbie stood looking on with
the critical eye of a boy. "A baby sticks out his tongue when you wipe
his face with a wet rag," he said, and George snorted. "What a boy
don't see ain't worth seeing," he said. The boy's mother reached out,
drew him to her, and attempted to take from his clenched hands a piece
of castiron, a rusty key, and a hog's tooth. "Throw those nasty things
away."

"Let him keep his tools," said George. "A boy can't work without tools."
He clung to the implements of his trade. She turned him about and set him
adrift. "Mr. Milford," she said, "you don't seem to be quite yourself
this afternoon. You aren't enjoying yourself."

He appeared surprised that she should think so. If he were not enjoying
himself it was news to him, deserving of a big headline. She saw his eye
searching the woods; she thought of the young woman who sighed out her
breath at a window far away, waiting for him to hoe out a place for her.
The wreath that she had hung upon him began to wither. After all, he was
but a man with a shifting soul, and she did not believe that his talk
had morally helped her husband. George w