I followed the kind-hearted man, but I wished that the liquid depth of the agent's blue eyes had a proper parallel upon the estate which he had imposed upon me. I returned as full of wrath as my pail was of water, when, across the fence, I saw Sophronia's face, so suffused with tender exaltation, that admiration speedily banished ill nature. But it was for a brief moment only, for Sophronia's finely-cut lips parted and their owner exclaimed: "Oh, Pierre! What a charming pastoral picture--you and the pail, and the lawn as a background! I wish we might always have to get water from our neighbor's, well." We retired early, and in the delightful quiet of our rural retreat, with the moon streaming through our chamber window, Sophronia became poetic, and I grew too peaceful and happy even to harbor malice against the agent. The eastern sun found his way through the hemlocks to wake us in the morning, and the effect was so delightfully different from the rising bell of the boarding-house, that when Sophronia indulged in some freedom with certain of Whittier's lines, and exclaimed: "Sad is the man who never sees The sun shine through his hemlock trees" I appreciated her sentiment, and expressed my regard in a, loving kiss. Again I made a fire out of doors, boiled coffee, fried ham and eggs, made some biscuit, begged some milk of our neighbor, and then we had a delightful little breakfast. Then I started for the station. "Don't forget the stove, dear," said Sophronia, as she gave me a parting kiss; "and be sure to send a butcher, and baker, and grocer, and--" Just then our domestic appeared and remarked: "Arah ye may as well get another girl; the likes ai me isn't goin' to bring wather from half-a-mile away." Sophronia grew pale, but she lost not an atom of her saintly calmness; she only said, half to herself: "Poor thing! she hasn't a bit of poetry in her soul." When I returned in the evening, I found Sophronia in tears. The stove men had not quite completed their work, so Sophronia and her assistant had eaten nothing but dry bread since breakfast. The girl interrupted us to say that the stove was ready, but that she couldn't get either coal or wood, and would I just come and see why? I descended five of the cellar stairs, but the others were covered with water, and upon the watery expanse about me floated the wagon-load of wood I had purchased. The coal heap, under a window fifteen feet away, loomed up like a rugged crag of basaltic rock. I took soundings with a stick and found the water was rather more than two feet deep. Fortunately, there were among my war relics a pair of boots as long as the legs of their owner, so I drew these on and descended the stairs with shovel and coal scuttle. The boots had not been oiled in ten years, so they found accommodation for several quarts of water. As I strode angrily into the kitchen and set the scuttle down with a suddenness which shook the floor, Sophronia clapped her hands in ecstasy.