dn't you? What were the
symptoms?" she asked, between her sips.

"What's generally the symptoms? I felt sick and wanted to keel over."

"Had you been--?"

"No; I hadn't. You tell your father that I'll tell him about it, when he
comes. I ain't goin' to be doctored by hearsay. Did you see Sol Bassitt's
barn, as you come over the hill?"

"I came by the lower road."

"What did you do that for? It's a good mile further."

"Yes; but it's better riding, that way."

"You'd better go back over the hill. The barn's worth seein', the best
one this side of town." Mrs. Richardson rocked to and fro in exultation
at having some one to listen to her month's accumulation of gossip.
Bannock Bars was an isolated hamlet, and visitors were few. "Sol's girl,
Fannie, has gone to Oswego for a week. She's had scarlet fever, and it
left her ailin'. It's too bad, for she is a likely girl."

"Very likely," Phebe assented, half under her breath.

"What?"

"I said it was extremely probable."

"What was?" Mrs. Richardson glared at her guest who was tranquilly waving
a palm-leaf fan.

"That Fannie is a good girl."

"Well, she is," Mrs. Richardson returned shortly.

There was a silence, while Phebe inspected the black cambric binding of
her fan, and tried to gather energy to go out into the hot sun once more.
Mrs. Richardson had rocked herself into more placid humor.

"They've got a boarder over to Sykes's," she resumed.

"Have they?" Phebe spoke indifferently. Bannock Bars was too near town
for her to realize how countrified it was, how the coming of a single
stranger could stir the placid current of its existence.

"He's from New York, Bartlett is his name, or some such thing. They say
he's a music feller."

"A what?" Phebe wondered whether Mrs. Richardson had reference to a
member of a German band. The words suggested something of the kind.

"A feller that writes music. I don't know anything about it only what
they say. Anyhow, he's brought a pianner with him, and they say he bangs
away on it like all possessed, and then stops short and scolds. I went
past there, one day, when the windows was open, and I heard him thumpin'
and tiddlin' away for dear life. It didn't seem to me there was much tune
to it, nor time neither; you couldn't so much as tell where one line left
off and the next begun."

Phebe's fan slid out of her lap, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she
dropped her handkerchief.

"Have you seen him?" she asked,