At six o’clock that afternoon, when Jean drove back into the yard with her father, she had two packages, her shoes and the box of paper. She had not been her usual talkative self on the way home. This gentleman sitting beside her was the farmer to whose house she was going. He had met her at the train. She was looking about the country and admiring things; she found seven things to admire which she had never noticed before. At the tea-table she intended to talk about them—“rave,” as the summer boarders did. She went up to her little room and gravely unpacked her shawl-strap, putting the things into the drawers and the closet. Her sister Lottie was setting the tea-table,—not in her play, but in sober reality,—and it was Minnie’s turn to milk to-night. The four sisters shared the housework with their mother; Jean was number three. Pet, eleven years old, was the youngest. “I must take a great interest in everybody,” Jean said to herself. “Boarders always do. I must try to do good to somebody, as Mrs. Lane helped me last summer.” At the supper-table she began to talk about the beautiful five-mile drive from town, and the sunset from the top of the hill. “It _is_ pretty,” said Minnie. “And the bridge with the willows. It is pretty enough for a picture; and the ducks sailing down the stream.” “I always said we had pretty things near home,” remarked her father. Then Lottie found a nook in the woods to talk about, and Pet told of a place like a cave, and the view on the top after you climbed the big rock. The tired mother brightened. After supper Jean followed her father out the back door and stood beside him. “How is the watermelon patch doing?” she asked, in a voice of great interest, after thinking a minute. “Finely! Never so well before. Come and look at it.” It was a pleasant walk. Jean imagined that she had a white shawl thrown about her, and once in a while gave it a twitch as she listened while the farmer talked about his melons. She asked questions she had never thought of asking before, and learned several new things about the farm. “It’s a good thing to be a good farmer,” she said. “I never thought before how much farmers had to know.” Her father looked pleased. It was Jean’s work to wash the milk-pails and milk-pans. She did it that night with a sense of enjoyment which she had never had before, for she was simply “helping” of her own accord. She would be very helpful; she would try to make these strangers care very much for her. She would watch every day to see what she could do for them. Mrs. Lane last summer had taught the class in the Sunday-school to which Jean belonged, and had said that “all must try to be a blessing to every one whom their life touched.” It appeared to Jean that her life touched everybody’s in this house.