"I'm not a strange man. I've seen her in her salad days. 'Twas potato salad, too, symbolic of the soil whence she had sprung." But Olive held up her hand for mercy. "Reed, you are a most impossible type of invalid. If you keep on like this, I'll tell Mrs. Brenton that you'd love to have her come and sing hymns to you." "Olive! For--" And then his curiosity overcame his consternation. "Can she sing?" he queried. "Very prettily." Olive's accent defied analysis. "She would love it, too. I know, because, only the other day, she asked me to give you a message." "And you embezzled it?" "Until it seemed a proper season. If I had given it too early, you might have mislaid it in your memory, and forgotten to send a grateful answer." "What did the woman want?" Reed questioned, with a sudden curtness that betrayed to Olive's ear the crackling of the thin ice on which, day by day, they skated over the surface of the tragedy. Nevertheless, Olive struck out fearlessly. Even if the ice did crack and let them through, such old, well-tried friends as Reed and herself could face what lay beneath it, without sentimental fears. They had taken one such plunge together; they both preferred to avoid another, if they could, and yet better to flounder through the ice than to keep away from it entirely. Therefore Olive's tone was nonchalant, as she reported,-- "I met her in the street, the day after you came home, and she begged me to tell you--" "She took it as a matter of course you'd be bidden to the private view," Reed interrupted. "Of course. The whole community understood that. Else, what was the use of our breaking our collar bones in unison, when you lured me into tobogganing off the barn?" Olive replied promptly. "Where was I? Oh, yes,--begged me to tell you how well she remembered your kindness to her--yes, your kindness--when she was a shy child from the country." Reed's comment was a terse one. "Shy! She!" he said. "You sound like an Indian dialect. However--And that she should claim a place among your earlier friends, when the time came when they could sit with you." Reed squirmed. "Sit with! Oh, Lord! That settles it, Olive. In spite of all your polite evasions, the town does look upon me as a moral asset, a chronic case to be put upon a par with other charities," he said, with sudden bitterness. Olive's colour came, though not from annoyance. "Don't be a dunce, Reed," she besought him. "You merely are the latest sensation in returning prodigals; you haven't sufficient staying power to become a charity, or even a fad. Then I shall tell the sympathetic lady--?" "To go to everlasting thunder," Reed growled ungratefully. "Hang it all, Olive, does she think I want a row of hens coming to cluck above the ruins?" "Which reminds me," Olive rose; "when do you look for the conjugal rooster?" "Brenton? Sit down again; you're not in any hurry," Reed urged her. But she shook her head.