water for several years. The well belonging to your
place was covered up when the road was cut through, a few years ago, and
neighbor Hubbell--well, _I_ don't say anything against him--neighbors
must be neighborly, but folks _do_ say he's too stingy to dig a new
well. That's the reason the cottage hasn't been occupied much for the
last few years. But everybody is welcome to draw from my well--come
along."

I followed the kind-hearted man, but I wished that the liquid depth of
the agent's blue eyes had a proper parallel upon the estate which he had
imposed upon me. I returned as full of wrath as my pail was of water,
when, across the fence, I saw Sophronia's face, so suffused with tender
exaltation, that admiration speedily banished ill nature.

But it was for a brief moment only, for Sophronia's finely-cut lips
parted and their owner exclaimed:

"Oh, Pierre! What a charming pastoral picture--you and the pail, and the
lawn as a background! I wish we might always have to get water from our
neighbor's, well."

We retired early, and in the delightful quiet of our rural retreat, with
the moon streaming through our chamber window, Sophronia became poetic,
and I grew too peaceful and happy even to harbor malice against the
agent. The eastern sun found his way through the hemlocks to wake us in
the morning, and the effect was so delightfully different from the
rising bell of the boarding-house, that when Sophronia indulged in some
freedom with certain of Whittier's lines, and exclaimed:

"Sad is the man who never sees
The sun shine through his hemlock trees"

I appreciated her sentiment, and expressed my regard in a, loving kiss.
Again I made a fire out of doors, boiled coffee, fried ham and eggs,
made some biscuit, begged some milk of our neighbor, and then we had a
delightful little breakfast. Then I started for the station.

"Don't forget the stove, dear," said Sophronia, as she gave me a parting
kiss; "and be sure to send a butcher, and baker, and grocer, and--"

Just then our domestic appeared and remarked:

"Arah ye may as well get another girl; the likes ai me isn't goin' to
bring wather from half-a-mile away."

Sophronia grew pale, but she lost not an atom of her saintly calmness;
she only said, half to herself:

"Poor thing! she hasn't a bit of poetry in her soul."

When I returned in the evening, I found Sophronia in tears. The stove
men had not quite completed their work, so Sophronia and her assis