companion, lying full length on the
stubble in the shadow of the oak. It came to him with a curious shock
that Bennett was in love. No "calf love" this time! Just a young
man's love for a young woman--sound and natural, and beautiful, and
right.... "I wonder," Maurice thought, "does she know it?"

It seemed as if Johnny, puffing at his pipe, and slapping a mosquito on
his lean brown hand, answered his thought:

"Edith's astonishingly young. She doesn't realize that she's grown up."
There was a pause; "_Or that I have._"

Maurice was silent; he suddenly felt old. These two--these
children!--believing in love, and in each other, were in a world of
their own; a world which knew no hidden household in the purlieus of
Mercer; no handsome, menacing, six-year-old child; no faded, jealous
woman, overflowing with wearisome caresses! In this springtime world was
Edith--vigorous, and sweet, and supremely reasonable;--and _never_
temperamental! And this young man, loving her.... Maurice turned over on
his face in the grass; but he did not kiss the earth's "perfumed
garment"; he bit his own clenched fist.

He was very silent for the rest of their day in the field for one
thing, they had to work at a high pitch, for then were blue-black clouds
in the west! At a little after three Edith came out again, but not to
help.

"I had to put on my glad rags," she said, sadly, "because some people
are coming to tea. I hate 'em--I mean the rags."

Maurice stopped long enough to turn and look at her, and say, "They're
mighty pretty!" And so, indeed, they were--a blue organdie, with white
ribbons around the waist, and a big white hat with a pink rose in a knot
of black velvet on the brim. "How's Eleanor?" he said, beginning to
skewer a bale of hay on to his pitchfork.

"She's afraid there's going to be a thunderstorm," Edith said; "that's
why I came out here. She wants you, Maurice."

"All right," he said, briefly; and struck his fork down in the earth.
"I've got to go, Johnny."

To do one's duty without love is doubtless better than to fail in doing
one's duty, but it has its risks. Maurice's heartless "kindness" to his
wife was like a desert creeping across fertile earth; the eager
generosity of boyhood had long ago hardened into the gray aridity of
mere endurance.

Edith turned and walked back with him; they were both silent until
Maurice said, "You've got Johnny's scalp all right, Skeezics."

"Don't be silly!" she said; her ann