As the miles sped away Carson seemed to feel the need of impressing upon her the fact that her summer was not to be one of unalloyed pleasure. He sketched the life of the farm, her own work upon it, as if to prepare her for the worst. “My wife’s got the reputation of being a hard woman,” he told her confidentially. “But she’s a good woman, good clean through. She works her fingers to the bone, and she can’t abide a lazy, trifling girl around the place. You work hard, Sally, and speak nice and respectful-like, and you two’ll get on, I warrant.” “Yes, sir,” Sally stammered. “Well, Sally,” he told her at last, “here’s your new home. This lane leads past the orchards—I got ten acres in fruit trees, all of ’em bearing—and the gardens, then right up to the house. Pretty fine place, if I do say so myself. I got two hundred acres in all, quite a sizeable farm for the middle west. Don’t them orchards look pretty?” Sally came out of her frightened reverie, forced her eyes to focus on the beautiful picture spread out on a giant canvas before her. Then she gave an involuntary exclamation of pleasure. Row after row of fruit trees, evenly spaced and trimmed to perfection, stretched before her on the right. The child in her wanted to spring from the seat of the car, run ecstatically from tree to tree, to snatch sun-ripened fruit. “You have a good fruit crop,” she said primly. “There’s the house.” The farmer pointed to the left. “Six rooms and a garret. My daughter, Pearl, dogged the life out of me until I had electric lights put in, and a fancy bathtub. She even made me get a radio, but it comes in right handy in the evenings, specially in winter. My daughter, Pearl, can think of more ways for me to spend money than I can to earn it,” he added with a chuckle, so that Sally knew he was proud of Pearl, proud of her urban tastes. The car swept up to the front of the house; Clem Carson’s hand on the horn summoned his women folks. The house, which seemed small to Sally, accustomed to the big buildings of the orphanage, was further dwarfed by the huge red barns that towered at the rear. The house itself was white, not so recently painted as the lordly barns, but it was pleasant and homelike, the sort of house which Sally’s chums at the orphanage had pictured as an ideal home, when they had let their imaginations run away with them. Sally herself, born with a different picture of home in her mind, had romanced about a house which would have made this one look like servants’ quarters, but now that it was before her she felt a thrill of pleasure. At least it was a home, not an institution. A woman, big, heavy-bosomed, sternly corseted beneath her snugly fitting, starched blue chambray house dress, appeared upon the front porch and stood shading her eyes against the western sun, which revealed the thinness of her iron-gray hair and the deep wrinkles in her tanned face.