Always, always something came between Peter and happiness. He had been brooding and miserable for as long as he could remember, with only now and then a moment of intense happiness to repay him for his misery. All his life he had worried about good and evil, about God and hell, about his features, his clothes, what people were thinking of him, and whether he would ever amount to anything. And now that he was in love he was experiencing a deeper and more exquisite misery than he could have imagined possible. Maxine! Maxine! But here she came at last, all radiant and smiling, her cheeks as red as apples. His heart leapt up in a moment and all his doubts left him. They walked along the beach, skipped stones on the thin ice and on the open stretches of water, dug a bird's nest out of the high, black banks of peat which skirt the beach to the south of Charley's Bluff. They discovered a little stream and followed its course back through the willows to a clearing where they explored a deserted cabin and a barn still filled with timothy and clover. From the wide door of the loft they could see across the lake to Lake House Point and to the Brailsford farm with its bright red barns and to the great cottonwood tree on Cottonwood Hill. "You see that big tree," Peter said. "Not a man in the country can climb it, not even my father. But I'm going to climb it some day." "Uh huh," said Maxine comfortably. "I'm going to do lots of things in my life. Great things. I'm learning a heap about draftsmanship at the Trailer factory. I'm almost finished with my blue prints for that camp trailer. Maybe some day when I get to be famous...." "Don't talk shop," Maxine said. "Well, what shall we talk about?" "Don't let's talk, beautiful boy." She stopped his mouth with kisses and unashamed gave him his first lesson in love. * * * * * As was usual in Brailsford Junction death came before the doctor. Temperance was alone in the house when her mother died. She went up the stairs at six o'clock bringing the old lady a bite of supper and found her breathing heavily and rather chilled. She tried to reach Doctor Whitehead by telephone, but no one answered at the house or the office. She called out the upstairs window to a passing boy and told him to look for the doctor in front of the pool hall, then turned back to the stricken woman who opened her eyes once and smiled at Temperance feebly. Temperance thought that the poor old thing was humming a hymn but when she leaned closer she realized that it was "Daisy Bell," a great favorite of her mother's. Thinking about it later she realized that her mother had never been what Brailsford Junction usually termed a Christian. Even before the death rattle began, the thin face turned blue and the small hands clutching the counterpane were as cold as ice.