They noted, unconsciously, of course, every detail. Snowy linen, touches of soft color, graceful lines of bust and side--the slender fingers that could almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herself sometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of the women, shuddered with sympathetic pain, to think that the crowning wonder and beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted from its true purpose. Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results of fruitless labor--and, more pitiful yet, in the bent shoulders of the older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be permanent. And as these things came to her, she clasped the poor wondering things to her side with a convulsive wish to make life a little brighter for them. "How is your mother to-day?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eating her luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window. "Purty well," said Sadie, in a hesitating way. Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as they raced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grass in the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his hands holding a string which formed a snare. It was like fishing to young Izaak Walton. It was very still and hot, and the cheep and trill of the gophers and the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud of butterflies were fluttering about a pool near; a couple of big flies buzzed and mumbled on the pane. "What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking at Sadie, who was distinctly ill at ease. "Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other. Lily insisted. "She 'n' pa's had an awful row"---- "Sadie!" said the teacher warningly, "what language!" "I mean they quarreled, an' she don't speak to him any more." "Why, how dreadful!" "An' pa he's awful cross; and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to wait on table." "I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family. V. Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him. He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task and was just about ready to go when Lily spoke to him. "Good morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It must be time to go to dinner--aren't you ready to go? I want to talk with you." Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down the road with the school-ma'am, but there was something in her look which seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and, besides, he was not in good humor. "Yes, in a minnit--soon's I fix up this hole. Them shoats, I b'lieve, would go through a key-hole, if they could once get their snoots in."