His mother leaned out from the back seat, and smiled at the girls very cordially. "Hurry, twinnies," she said, "we must start, or we'll be late for supper. Come in with me, won't you, Larkie?" "What a greasy schemer she is," thought Carol, climbing into her place without delay. Jim placed the battered suit-case and the tattered bag beneath the seat, and drew the rug over his mother's knees. Then he went to Lark's side, and tucked it carefully about her feet. "It's awfully dusty," he said. "You shouldn't have dolled up so. Shall I put your purse in my pocket? Don't forget you promised to feed the chickens--I'm counting on you to do it for me." Then he stepped in beside Carol, laughing into her bright face, and the good-bys rang back and forth as the car rolled away beneath the heavy arch of oak leaves that roofed in Maple Avenue. The twins fairly reveled in the glories of the country through the golden days that followed, and enjoyed every minute of every day, and begrudged the hours they spent in sleep. The time slipped by "like banana skins," declared Carol crossly, and refused to explain her comparison. And the last day of their visit came. Supper was over at seven o'clock, and Lark said, with something of wistfulness in her voice, "I'm going out to the orchard for a farewell weep all by myself. And don't any of you disturb me,--I'm so ugly when I cry." So she set out alone, and Jim, a little awkwardly, suggested that Carol take a turn or so up and down the lane with him. Mrs. Forrest stood at the window and watched them, tearful-eyed, but with tenderness. "My little boy," she said to herself, "my little boy. But she's a dear, sweet, pretty girl." In the meantime, Jim was acquitting himself badly. His face was pale. He was nervous, ill at ease. He stammered when he spoke. Self-consciousness was not habitual to this young man of the Iowa farm. He was not the awkward, ignorant, gangling farm-hand we meet in books and see on stages. He had attended the high school in Mount Mark, and had been graduated from the state agricultural college with high honors. He was a farmer, as his father had been before him, but he was a farmer of the new era, one of those men who takes plain farming and makes it a profession, almost a fine art. Usually he was self-possessed, assertive, confident, but, in the presence of this sparkling twin, for once he was abashed.