ings, and left him to Clementina over the coffee.

"She's looking fine, doesn't the doctor think? This air will do
everything for her."

"Oh, yes; she's a great deal betta than she was befo'e we came."

"That's right. Well, now, you've got me here, you must let me make
myself useful any way I can. I've got a spare month that I can put in
here in Venice, just as well as not; I sha'n't want to push north till
the frost's out of the ground. They wouldn't have a chance to try my
gleaner, on the other side of the Alps much before September, anyway.
Now, in Ohio, the part I come from, we cut our wheat in June. When is
your wheat harvest at Middlemount?"

Clementina laughed. "I don't believe we've got any. I guess it's all
grass."

"I wish you could see our country out there, once."

"Is it nice?"

"Nice? We're right in the centre of the state, measuring from north to
south, on the old National Road." Clementina had never heard of this
road, but she did not say so. "About five miles back from the Ohio
River, where the coal comes up out of the ground, because there's so
much of it there's no room for it below. Our farm's in a valley, along
a creek bottom, what you Yankees call an intervals; we've got three
hundred acres. My grandfather took up the land, and then he went back
to Pennsylvania to get the girl he'd left there--we were Pennsylvania
Dutch; that's where I got my romantic name--they drove all the way out
to Ohio again in his buggy, and when he came in sight of our valley with
his bride, he stood up in his buggy and pointed with his whip. 'There!
As far as the sky is blue, it's all ours!'"

Clementina owned the charm of his story as he seemed to expect, but when
he said, "Yes, I want you to see that country, some day," she answered
cautiously.

"It must be lovely. But I don't expect to go West, eva."

"I like your Eastern way of saying everr," said Hinkle, and he said it
in his Western way. "I like New England folks."

Clementina smiled discreetly. "They have their faults like everybody
else, I presume."

"Ah, that's a regular Yankee word: presume," said Hinkle. "Our teacher,
my first one, always said presume. She was from your State, too."

XXIX.

In the time of provisional quiet that followed for Clementina, she
was held from the remorses and misgivings that had troubled her before
Hinkle came. She still thought that she had let Dr. Welwright go
away believing that she had not cared enough for