“There's nothing more to know, really,” said Mrs. Bradley, with a superior air. “He's undoubtedly the son of some Englishman of fortune, sent out here for his health.” “Hush!” Miss Macy had heard a step in the passage. It halted at last, half irresolutely, before the open door of the kitchen, and the stranger appeared with an embarrassed air. But in his brief absence he seemed to have completely groomed himself, and stood there, the impersonation of close-cropped, clean, and wholesome English young manhood. The two women appreciated it with cat-like fastidiousness. “I beg your pardon; but really you're going to let a fellow do something for you,” he said, “just to keep him from looking like a fool. I really can do no end of things, you know, if you'll try me. I've done some camping-out, and can cook as well as the next man.” The two women made a movement of smiling remonstrance, half coquettish, and half superior, until Mrs. Bradley, becoming conscious of her bare arms and the stranger's wandering eyes, colored faintly, and said with more decision:-- “Certainly not. You'd only be in the way. Besides, you need rest more than we do. Put yourself in the rocking-chair in the veranda, and go to sleep until Mr. Bradley comes.” Mainwaring saw that she was serious, and withdrew, a little ashamed at his familiarity into which his boyishness had betrayed him. But he had scarcely seated himself in the rocking-chair before Miss Macy appeared, carrying with both hands a large tin basin of unshelled peas. “There,” she said pantingly, placing her burden in his lap, “if you really want to help, there's something to do that isn't very fatiguing. You may shell these peas.” “SHELL them--I beg pardon, but how?” he asked, with smiling earnestness. “How? Why, I'll show you--look.” She frankly stepped beside him, so close that her full-skirted dress half encompassed him and the basin in a delicious confusion, and, leaning over his lap, with her left hand picked up a pea-cod, which, with a single movement of her charming little right thumb, she broke at the end, and stripped the green shallow of its tiny treasures. He watched her with smiling eyes; her own, looking down on him, were very bright and luminous. “There; that's easy enough,” she said, and turned away. “But--one moment, Miss--Miss--?” “Macy,” said louise. “Where am I to put the shells?” “Oh! throw them down there--there's room enough.” She was pointing to the canyon below. The veranda actually projected over its brink, and seemed to hang in mid air above it. Mainwaring almost mechanically threw his arm out to catch the incautious girl, who had stepped heedlessly to its extreme edge. “How odd! Don't you find it rather dangerous here?” he could not help saying. “I mean--you might have had a railing that wouldn't intercept the view and yet be safe?”