as nodding. She shook him, and
he looked up quickly, as if he expected a railway conductor to tell him
that he was to get off there.

"What makes you so stupid?"

"The beastly weather. Well, I'm going up."

She sat there rocking herself, with a knife in her bosom for the man who
sat near, the deceitful laborer. He was, after all, nothing but a hired
man. What could she have expected of him? She was foolish to believe
that there was anything spiritual about him. She would give him a dig.

"The young woman whom you were pleased to call a 'peach'----"

"I didn't call her a 'peach'."

"No matter. The young woman who has been called a 'peach,' with a
bouquet of man's promises perfuming her heart, thinks, no doubt, that he
is longing to see her again, when, perhaps, he has forgotten her, or
remembers her only as a joke. Those foreign girls are so simple." She
looked at him with her drooping eyes. Her fancy rewarded her with the
belief that there was a sudden mixture of red in the brown of his face.

"Don't you think she's handsome?" she asked, after waiting for him to
speak.

"No," he answered, glad to disappoint her.

"Oh, I do. Don't you, really?"

"Well, she's not ugly."

"But don't you think she's handsome?"

"Yes," he said, and looked as if he wanted to add: "Now what are you
going to do about it?"

"I knew you did. Men have such queer tastes. Well, I don't think she's a
bit handsome. It's no trick at all to keep the eyes wide open; and any
woman can let her hair go to seed. Of course, I ought not to say
anything, but I should think that you would hold a brighter picture of
some one who is waiting--but what am I saying? How warm it is! We are
surely going to have rain."

She heard the boy bawling out in the orchard. She ran to him. Milford
stalked off toward home. "She's a little fool," he thought, and
dismissed her. In the road he met the "discoverer" and the "peach,"
decked with purple flowers. He waited for them to show a disposition to
halt. They did not, so he bowed and passed them by. On the knoll in the
oat field he turned and looked back. On the veranda he saw a purple
glimmer. Was the girl waving flowers at him? He turned toward home, with
the music of her accent in his heart. The place was deserted. The hired
man was out among the women, poverty once bitten, looking for another
bite. Milford stretched himself out upon the grass under the walnut
tree. Grimly, he compared himself with a man thro