It came to me that afternoon what his attitude at the woodpile essentially was. He stood there again alone--the ducks were quacking in the pond--and as I looked at his neat white body and the lemon-colored bill and orange-colored legs, all presented in the same dignified profile, I saw that his was by instinct the historical portrait attitude: Perry after Lake Erie, Webster before replying to Hayne, Washington on being notified of his appointment as Commander-in-Chief--you will understand what I mean. And if you smile at my absorption in these little straws from the farmyard you have never known the blessing of true leisure. To drop clean out of my mind for a while the law and investment of trust funds and the self-induced hysterics of Wall Street, and study a perfectly irrelevant, unuseful trifle, such as the family life of Sir Francis and his ladies, brings a pastoral health to the spirit and to the biliary duct. There was an error in my conclusions about the Countess and Duchess which I did not have a chance to perceive for a day or two, because our domestic harmony was mysteriously disturbed. That clear note in May’s voice waked up again, this time a tone or so higher; and it was kept awake by one thing after another. It began after a wagonful of people had passed the ranch on its way down the valley to town. I was off by the river when they stopped a few minutes on the road outside the fence. One could not see who they were at that distance. Jimsy left his ditch work and talked to them and when they had gone returned to it. At our next meal Jimsy’s eye was bewildered--and something more--and May’s voice was bad for digestion. As soon as my last mouthful was swallowed I sought the solitude of my cabin and read a book until bedtime. How should one connect that wagonload of people with the new and higher tide of unrest? Nothing was more the custom than this stopping [Illustration: “Well, Jimsy, are you going to get me any wood for this stove--or ain’t you?”] of neighbors to chat over the fence. May’s voice and Jimsy’s eye kept me as often and as far from their neighborhood as I could get. It was Scipio, the next time I saw him, who began at once: “Did you see Mrs. Faxon?” “Who’s she?” “Gracious! I thought everybody in this country knowed her. She’s an alfalfa widow.” “Well, I seem to have somehow missed her.” “She went down to town the other day. Pity you’ve missed her. Awful good-looker.” “Well, I’ll try to meet her.” “Her and Jimsy used to meet a whole heap,” said Scipio. “Oh!” said I. “H’m! All the same May’s a fool.” “Did she get mad? Did she get mad?” demanded Scipio, vivaciously.