"Stella Goodwin." "It's rather a pretty name," I thought, as I read it on the flyleaf of a volume she had left in Mrs. Bert's sitting-room. The volume itself amused me--Chamberlain's "Foundations of the Nineteenth Century." Fancy coming to the country for a rest, and reading Chamberlain, most restless because most provocative of books! I was waiting for breakfast, impatiently, having been at work on my manuscripts since five. Mrs. Bert was in the kitchen; Bert was at the barn. The hour was seven-thirty. I was idly turning the leaves of Chamberlain when there was a rustle on the stairs, and Miss Stella Goodwin entered with a cheerful "Good morning." "See here," said I, "what are you doing with this book, if you are off for a rest? This is no book for a nervous wreck to be reading." "Who said I was a nervous wreck?" she answered. "I'm just tired, that's all. I guess it's really spring fever. I saw a spear of real grass in Central Park, and ran away." "From what?" I asked. "From the dictionary," she replied. "The _which?_" said I. "The dictionary. Would you like me to sing you a song of the things that begin with 'hy'?" She laughed again, and began to chant in burlesque Gregorian, "Hyopotamus, hyoscapular, hyoscine, Hyoscyameæ, hyoscyamine, Hyoscyamus-----" "Stop!" I cried. "You will have me hypnotized. See, I'm on the 'hy's' myself! Please explain--not sing." "Well," she laughed, "you see it's this way. I have to eat, drink, and try to be merry, or to-morrow I die, so to postpone to-morrow I am working on a new dictionary. _Somebody_ has to work on dictionaries, you know, and justify the pronunciation of America to man. I'm sort of learned, in a mild, harmless, anti-militant way. It isn't fair to keep the truth from you--_I have a degree in philology!_ My doctor's thesis was published by the press of my kind University, at $1.50 per copy, of which as many as seventeen were sold, and I'm still paying up the money I borrowed while preparing it. I stood the dictionary pretty well down to the 'hy's,' and then one day something snapped inside of me, and I began to cry. That wouldn't have been so bad, if I hadn't made the mistake of crying on a sheet of manuscript by a learned professor, about Hyoscyamus (which is a genus of dicotyledonous gamopetalous plants), and the ink ran. Then I knew I should have to take a rest in the cause of English, pure and well defined. So here I am. The doctor tells me I must live out of doors and saw wood." "Madam," I cried, "God has sent you! I shall get my orchard cleaned up at last!" "Breakfast!" called Mrs. Bert. "Miss Goodwin," I announced at that meal, "is going to saw up the dead wood in my orchard this morning." "No, she ain't. The idee!" cried Mrs. Bert. "She's jest goin' ter rest up for the next four weeks, an' grow fat." "You are both wrong," laughed the young lady. "I'm not going to begin on Mr. Upton's wood pile this morning, but I expect to finish it before I go away."