aunt six-footer, lean as he was long, and with a
manly beard upon his pink and white face. He shambled forward on his
great feet and shyly extended his mighty hands.

Mr. Hale grasped them heartily, eager to put the awkward youth at ease;
and, nodding toward the chair from which he had risen, exclaimed:

"So, you are he who does that beautiful carving! I congratulate you on
your skill, and I hope you will have some trifle of your work to sell a
traveler. I've never seen finer."

Otto flushed with pleasure and was about to reply, but again Elsa
commanded:

"Milk the goat, little one. After the guest feeds let the household
talk."

As if he had been the "child," the "little heart," his parents called
him he obediently entered the cabin, tied an apron before his lank body
and spread a tablecloth. Then, as deftly as if he had been a girl, he
arranged it with the three cups and plates the family possessed, took his
mother's cherished spoons from her chest, and, taking a small pail,
sought the goat, Gretchen.

"Now, I'm in for it," thought Mr. Hale, regretfully. "My poor
dyspepsia! Coffee, honey, and goat's milk! A combination to kill.
But even if it is, one must respond to such whole-souled hospitality as
this."

Jessica had no such qualms; and, indeed, the refreshment which her
visitor forced himself to accept was far more palatable than he had dared
expect; and, besides, he now brought to it that astonishing appetite
which had come to him on this eventful trip. When the luncheon was
disposed of, Dame Elsa held an exhibition of her wonderful knitting and
it seemed to the unappreciative stranger that a small fortune must have
been expended in yarns, and that even in this wilderness one might be
extravagant and wasteful.

"My wife would know more about such things than I do, but I should think
you might easily stock a whole shop with your tidies and things."

"Man alive, do I not? Didst think it was for the pleasure of one's
self the fingers are always at toil? Ach! Yet, of course, how could a
poor man from a far city understand! It is Elsa's knitting, and Elsa's
only, will all the tourists have who come to Sobrante; and in that Los
Angeles, so distant, where the master went but once every year already,
there is a merchant buys all. Ay. See here. I show you!"

"I--I don't really care--I mean--ought we not to be going, Jessica?"
cried Mr. Hale, hopelessly, foreseeing another exhibition of "trash,"
as he considered