As she walked swiftly down the road, the long shafts of light and the wind gusts also, sinking to rest, played with her hair; and at the turn she met Silent Stead, who was returning from Gilead. Thinking the opportunity had come to recognize his kindness, she stopped, half turning to the roadway; but he, either through offishness or suspecting her design, passed on with a mere greeting. Not piqued, because she remembered Dr. Russell’s warning, Brooke went her way, smiling to herself in amusement; and when she neared the farm she broke into a run, Tatters barking and gambolling about her, so that Miss Keith, who came to the door at the sound, was forced to confess, though much against her will, that, in spite of his years of service to herself, Tatters had “transferred himself.” Meanwhile, by a strange perversity of fate, the radiant face of the girl whom Robert Stead had passed by so curtly on the road, turned homeward with him, all unbidden, now smiling at him from between Manfred’s mobile ears, sitting opposite him at his table, and even permeating the smoke wreaths from his pipe that coiled, as in a vision, around her head in fantastic tresses. CHAPTER XI BREAD Three weeks had now passed since Miss Keith’s departure, and the daily toil of each had been punctuated by a series of unexpected events. Much as Brooke had dreaded the going of her executive kinswoman, it was in a sense a relief. She was well aware that until she was entirely thrown upon her own resources it would be impossible to judge her strength or plan definitely for the future; and now that the move had been made, this planning was the next hill to climb. It was impossible for Brooke to have a quiet moment, except when she was alone in her room at night, so long as Miss Keith was in the house; for the estimable woman was continually remembering some important bit of advice, relative to the year’s rotation of work in the garden or the “putting up” of the fruit. One of the last details that she impressed upon Brooke in showing her baskets of various bulbs and a large store of the seeds of sweet peas, nasturtiums, and other hardy annual flowers, all neatly put up in paper bags, was to sow plenty of them in long rows like vegetables, because as she said “the rich folks were always stopping to see the view as they drove from Stonebridge to Gordon, and often sent in and begged to buy the old-fashioned flowers, because their gardens had not room for them.” Brooke promised, but the matter passed quickly from her overcrowded mind; for, interpreted by Miss Keith, the work of the mistress of the West homestead would have kept at least six Plymouth-Rock-ribbed housewives at work from rise until set of sun. Very different indeed was it from Mrs. Enoch Fenton’s soothing advice, “Dearie, just begin by doing what you must, and let the rest sort of slip off your hands until the Lord gives ’em the knack to handle it.”