"I didn't want you to catch me yet," she confessed. "But, I don't care. I can do some whole lines without a mistake. And I just got pounding away at that old song--my Daddy used to trot me on his foot to it--and I was so happy that I didn't care whether you came or not." "I'll smash the old fraud," said Jimmie looking with pretended savagery at the machine that he loved, "if it makes you feel that way about me." "Oh, I didn't mean that way at all! Of course I wanted you to come every minute." "But, how did the blamed thing get here?" Jimmie growled, still hunting for a pretended grievance. "It wasn't in the wagon." "It was! It was!" shouted Augusta jumping up in glee. "Remember how you jeered at my hat box, the day we moved from the wagon into the house. When I wouldn't let you touch it, or let you see me move it, you swore that I had another man hidden in it. You said you'd get a divorce." "But, honestly," she said, coming to lay her hand on his arm, "didn't you miss it, sometimes? I think I've seen you walking around at times and looking through your pockets." Jimmie laughed. He remembered his nervous trick, when something was wanting to him, of walking about and rummaging unconsciously through one pocket after another. "People that live in glass houses, shouldn't come home to roost--at least not near you, Augusta. I'm getting afraid of you. You see through me too completely." "And you know I cleaned out your room at the last moment. I saved and brought every last scrap of your book, even the things that you had thrown away. If you're good, some day, when you've gotten thoroughly sick and tired of chopping wood and hunting, and when I've had some more practice, I'll let you have it all. And then you can start it again, dictating to me. I'll never let you sit over a typewriter again. I'm sure it was that sitting stooped over, and fretting, that made all your trouble before." At last Jimmie understood the whole significance of the scheme. Augusta, serene and sure in her beautiful faith, had held the breaking bridges of life for him, and, while he had been weakly content to drift down into the depths of unhoping uselessness, she had looked calmly and surely ahead and had already seen him safely across and moving up the heights beyond. Once he had loved Augusta as a big brother adores and guards a little sister. Again, in another time, their positions had become reversed and he had loved her and leaned upon her and taken strength from her, almost as a child takes strength from a fondling mother. Now in the light of the nobler, mating partnership that he began to understand, he was conscious of another and more wonderful love. His gun and his game slid quietly to the ground and he took her gently into his arms with a new light of adoring tenderness in his eyes.