I don't know why I should have felt so, but just as soon as they got started to reading this morning I had a curious feeling, like you have when the lights burn low on the stage and the orchestra begins _The Flower Song_. The way they looked at each other made under my scalp tingle. Now, if I ever have a granddaughter that doesn't have this feeling in the presence of _great_ things I shall disinherit her and leave my diamonds to a society for tuberculosis or pure food or fresh air, or some of those charitable things. [Illustration: Jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol _Page 26_] Before long they branched off from Keats to Shelley, and Rufe didn't need a book with him. Just after he had finished a little verse beginning, "I can not give what men call love," I had sense enough to get up and go away from them. Although I have always been crazy to see a proposal, there was something in the atmosphere around that old gray rock that made me feel as if I were treading on sacred ground. (I hate to use expressions like this, that everybody else uses, but I can't think of anything else and it's getting too late to sit here by myself and try.) Anyhow it's the feeling you have when you go into a cathedral with stained glass windows. So I went away from them, but not very far away, just a little distance, to where I have a lovely pile of moss collected on the north side of a big tree. And the smotheration around my heart kept up. It seemed to me the _longest_ time before anything happened, for Cousin Eunice was jabbing holes in the sand with her parasol like she was being paid to do it by the hour. Finally, without any ado, he put his hands on hers and made her stop. "Sweetheart," I heard him say, so low that I could hardly hear, for _The Flower Song_ was buzzing through my head so loud. Then he seemed to remember me for he looked around, and, seeing that I was _clear_ gone, he said it again, "Sweetheart." She looked up at him when he said it, and looked and _looked_! Maybe she never had realized before just how big and broad-shouldered and brown-eyed Rufe really is! Neither one of them said anything, but he put both arms around her; and when I saw that they were going to kiss I shut my eyes right tight and stopped up my ears and buried my face in the pile of moss. Even then I never felt so much like a yellow dog in my life! CHAPTER II You hear a heap of talking these days about "the divine mission of woman," especially from long-haired preachers that don't believe in ladies voting; and another heap of talk about the "rights" of women from the ladies themselves. There was so much of it going on last winter when I was at Rufe's that I told some of it to Mammy Lou when I came home. She says it's every speck a question of dish-washing when you sift it down to the bottom. The women are tired of their job and the men are too proud to do it unless the window shades are pulled down.