“Well, never mind. We’ll drink some milk and then we’ll go for a little walk, but I think that to-morrow perhaps the rehearsals needn’t begin until after breakfast. There’ll be a long morning before you and you can rehearse in the morning and take the nature study in the afternoon.” “Yas’r,” said Minerva, a shade of reluctance in her tone which I attributed to the mention of nature study. Minerva evidently wanted life to be one grand sweet song. All that morning snatches of melody floated over the landscape in the which landscape we were idly lolling under the trees reading, and I think that household duties were neglected, but that James was not averse to work was shown by the fact that he carried great armfuls of kindling wood into the kitchen. When Ethel went out there just before lunch she found the west window banked up to the second sash with kindling wood. Ethel likes to have the whole house in ship shape order, and this unsightly pile of wood in the kitchen went against the grain. There was enough there to last a week and meantime the kitchen was robbed of that much daylight. James sat on the door-sill idly whittling a piece of kindling and Minerva, temporarily songless, was getting lunch ready. “Oh, James,” said Ethel after a rapid survey of the situation, “I wish if you haven’t anything else to do that you would pile that kindling wood out in the woodshed.” She told me he burst into his hearty laugh, and, rising with alacrity, he said: “Certainly, Mrs. Vernon,” and for the next half hour he was busily employed in undoing what he had done in the half hour before. “Oh, it will be easy to find employment for him along those lines,” said I when she told me. “We’ll just make him do things and undo them and that laugh of his will keep Minerva sweet natured and he’ll earn his wages over and over again.” “Well, it seems sort of wicked to make a human being do unnecessary things just for the sake of making him undo them again,” said my mistress of economics. “In cases like that the end justifies the means.” After lunch that day Ethel interrogated Minerva as to her feelings. “Oh, Mis. Vernon, James is like human folks to me. He’s in a way different from you an’ Mist. Vernon.” “Do you mean you think he’s better?” said Ethel, more to draw Minerva out than for any other reason. “No, but he’s more folksy. You an’ Mist. Vernon, after all’s said an’ done, is white. It ain’t dat he’s kinder dan you, but he’s more my kind. My, he’d be lovely in de city.” Minerva sighed.