valley
was a range of the Berkshires with every tree distinct.

Una was tired, but the morning's radiance inspired her. "My America--so
beautiful! Why do we turn you into stuffy offices and ugly towns?" she
marveled while she was dressing.

But as breakfast was not ready, her sudden wish to do something
magnificent for America turned into what she called a "before-coffee
grouch," and she sat on the porch waiting for the bell, and hoping that
the conversational Mr. Schwirtz wouldn't come and converse. It was to
his glory that he didn't. He appeared in masterful white-flannel
trousers and a pressed blue coat and a new Panama, which looked well on
his fleshy but trim head. He said, "Mornin'," cheerfully, and went to
prowl about the farm.

All through the breakfast Una caught the effulgence of Mr. Schwirtz's
prosperous-looking solidness, and almost persuaded herself that his
jowls and the slabs of fat along his neck were powerful muscles.

He asked her to play croquet. Una played a game which had been respected
in the smartest croqueting circles of Panama; she defeated him; and
while she blushed and insisted that he ought to have won, Mr. Schwirtz
chuckled about his defeat and boasted of it to the group on the porch.

"I was afraid," he told her, "I was going to find this farm kinda tame.
Usually expect a few more good fellows and highballs in mine, but thanks
to you, little sister, looks like I'll have a bigger time than a
high-line poker Party."

He seemed deeply to respect her, and Una, who had never had the
debutante's privilege of ordering men about, who had avoided Henry
Carson and responded to Walter Babson and obeyed chiefs in offices, was
now at last demanding that privilege. She developed feminine whims and
desires. She asked Mr. Schwirtz to look for her handkerchief, and bring
her magazine, and arrange her chair cushions, and take her for a walk to
"the Glade."

He obeyed breathlessly.

Following an old and rutted woodland road to the Glade, they passed a
Berkshire abandoned farm--a solid house of stone and red timbers,
softened by the long grasses that made the orchard a pleasant place.
They passed berry-bushes--raspberry and blackberry and currant, now
turned wild; green-gold bushes that were a net for sunbeams. They saw
yellow warblers flicker away, a king-bird swoop, a scarlet tanager
glisten in flight.

"Wonder what that red bird is?" He admiringly looked to her to know.

"Why, I think that's a