light; arching trees shut off
the heat of the summer afternoon, and the leaves shone translucent.
Ferns were in wild abundance. They sat on a fallen tree, thick
upholstered with moss, and listened to the trickle of a brook. Una was
utterly happy. In her very weariness there was a voluptuous feeling that
the air was dissolving the stains of the office.

He urged a compliment upon her only once more that day; but she
gratefully took it to bed with her: "You're just like this glade--make a
fellow feel kinda calm and want to be good," he said. "I'm going to cut
out--all this boozing and stuff-- Course you understand I never make a
_habit_ of them things, but still a fellow on the road--"

"Yes," said Una.

All evening they discussed croquet, Lenox, Florida, Miss Vincent and Mr.
Starr, the presidential campaign, and the food at the farm-house.
Boarders from the next farm-house came a-calling, and the enlarged
company discussed the food at both of the farm-houses, the presidential
campaign, Florida, and Lenox. The men and women gradually separated;
relieved of the strain of general and polite conversation, the men
gratefully talked about business conditions and the presidential
campaign and food and motoring, and told sly stories about Mike and Pat,
or about Ikey and Jakey; while the women listened to Mrs. Cannon's
stories about her youngest son, and compared notes on cooking, village
improvement societies, and what Mrs. Taft would do in Washington society
if Judge Taft was elected President. Miss Vincent had once shaken hands
with Judge Taft, and she occasionally referred to the incident. Mrs.
Cannon took Una aside and told her that she thought Mr. Starr and Miss
Vincent must have walked down to the village together that afternoon, as
she had distinctly seen them coming back up the road.

Yet Una did not feel Panama-ized.

She was a grown-up person, accepted as one, not as Mrs. Golden's
daughter; and her own gossip now passed at par.

And all evening she was certain that Mr. Schwirtz was watching her.

Sec. 4

The boarders from the two farm-houses organized a tremendous picnic on
Bald Knob, with sandwiches and chicken salad and cake and thermos
bottles of coffee and a whole pail of beans and a phonograph with seven
records; with recitations and pastoral merriment and kodaks snapping
every two or three minutes; with groups sitting about on blankets, and
once in a while some one explaining why the scenery was so sc