"If thet's how you feel, _I_ got a wood pile," said Bert. She refused to come down to Twin Fires with me that morning, so I toiled alone, getting out more of the brush from the orchard--all of the small stuff, in fact, which wasn't fit to save for fuel. In the afternoon she consented to come. As I looked at her hands and then at mine, I realized how pale she was. "It's wrong for anybody to be so pale as that," I thought, "to _have_ to be so pale as that!" I was beginning to pity her. When we reached the farm, I took her around under the kitchen window and showed her my seed beds, where the asters were already growing madly, some other varieties were up, and the weeds were busy, too; but in the present uncertainty of my horticultural knowledge I didn't dare pull up anything. I hadn't realized till that moment that half the fun of having a new place is showing it to somebody else and telling how grand it is going to be. "And where are you going to put these babies when you set them out?" she asked. "That's just the point," I cried. "I don't know. I want you to help me." "After Mrs. Bert's warning, I shouldn't dare advise you," she smiled. "Well, let's ask Hiroshige," said I. "Come on." "Is he your gardener? The name sounds quite un-Hibernian." I scorned a reply, and we went around to the shed where all my belongings were stored, still unpacked. I got a hammer and opened the box containing pictures, drawing forth my two precious Japanese prints. Then I led Miss Goodwin through the kitchen in spite of her protests of propriety, through the fragrance of new flooring, into the big south room, where Hard had nearly completed his main work and was getting in the new door frames while his assistants were patching up the floor. She sat down on the new settle, while I climbed on a box and hung the pictures, one over each mantel. Instantly the room assumed to my imagination something of its coming charm. Those two spots of colour against the dingy wood panels dressed up the desolation wonderfully. I hastily kicked some shavings and chips into the fireplaces and applied a match. "The first fires on the twin hearths!" I cried. "In your honour!" The girl smiled into my face, and did not joke. "That is very nice," she said. Then she rose and put out her hand. "Let me wish Twin Fires always plenty of wood and the happiness which goes with it." We shook hands, while the fire crackled, and already the spot seemed to me like home. Then she looked up at the prints. "Now," she cried, "how is honourable Hiroshige going to advise you? Here is a blue canal and a lavender sky in the west, and bright scarlet temple doors--and all the rest snow. Lavender and bright scarlet is rather a daring colour scheme, isn't it?"