"That's what I do!" said Red. "You must just hustle down and get things to boiling, or I'll throw bricks through the windows. I've been up for the last two hours." "Why! I don't believe it!" said Miss Mattie. "No more do I, but it seems like it," replied Red. "Don't you want the fire started? Come down and open up the house." When Miss Mattie appeared at the door, in he strode with an armful of wood, dropping it man-fashion, crash! on the floor. "Skip out of the way!" said he. "I'll show you how to build a fire!" The early morning had been the most desolate time to Miss Mattie. As the day warmed up the feeling of loneliness vanished, perhaps to return at evening, but not then with the same absoluteness as when she walked about the kitchen to the echo of her own footsteps in the morning. Now the slamming and the banging which accompanied Red's energetic actions rang in her ears most cheerily. She even found a relish in the smothered oath that heralded the thrust of a splinter in his finger. It was very wicked, but it was also very much alive. Red arose and dusted off his knees. "Now we're off!" he said as the fire began to roar. "What's next?" "If you'd grind the coffee, Will?" she suggested. "Sure! Where's the hand organ?" He put the mill between his knees, and converted the beans to powder, to the tune of "Old dog Tray" through his nose, which Miss Mattie found very amusing. She measured out the coffee, one spoonful for each cup, and one for the pot. Red watched her patiently, and when she had finished, he threw in the rest of the contents of the mill-drawer. "I like it fairly strong," said he in explanation. "Now, Will!" protested Miss Mattie. "Look at you! That will be as bitter as boneset!" "Thin her up with milk and she'll be all right," replied Red. "Well, such wasteful ways I never did see. Nobody'd think you were a day over fifteen." "I'm not," said Red stoutly, "and," catching her chin in his hand and turning her face up toward him--"Nobody'd put your score much higher than that neither, if they trusted to their eyes this morning." The compliment hit so tender a place that Miss Mattie lacked the resolution to tear it out, besides, it was so honest that it sounded much less like a compliment than a plain statement of fact. She bent hastily over the fire. "I'm glad I look young, Will," she said softly. "So'm I!" he assented heartily. "What's the sense in being old, anyhow? I'm as limber and good for myself as ever I was, in spite of my forty years." "You're not _forty_ years old!" exclaimed Miss Mattie. "You're joking!"