"I could never have done it alone," said I. "You have really been a great help." "Oh, I hope so!" she exclaimed. "I haven't had so much fun in years." We looked into the vegetable garden, and saw that Mike had gone, and Joe, too. My watch and the lengthening shadows warned me it was approaching six. Hot and pleasantly tired, we packed up the tools on the barrow, and wheeled them to the shed. "Now shall we go and hear the hermit?" I asked. She nodded, and we went down through the orchard, past the pool where the iris buds were already showing a spike of greenish white, through the maples, and into the pines. There we stood, side by side, in the quiet hush of coming sunset, and waited for the fairy horn. A song sparrow was singing out by the road, and the thin, sweet flutings of a Peabody came from the pasture. But the thrush was silent. "Please sing, Mr. Thrush!" she pleaded, looking at me after she spoke, with a wistful little smile of apology for her foolishness. "I want so to hear him again," she said. "We don't hear thrushes in New York, nor smell pine trees, nor feel this sweet, cool silence. Oh, the good pines!" "He will sing to-morrow," said I. "There is no opera on Thursdays." Her eyes twinkled once more. "Perhaps he has that terrible disease, 'sudden indisposition'," she laughed. "Come, we must go home to supper. It will take me hours to get clean." Out in the open, she looked at her hands. "See, I've begun to get callouses, too!" she exclaimed, holding out her palms proudly. "You've got blisters," said I. "No work for you to-morrow! Let me see." I touched her hand, as we paused beneath a blossoming apple tree, with the fragrance shedding about us. Our eyes met, too, as I did so. She drew her hand back gently, as the colour came to her cheeks. We walked on in silence, as far as the pump. Mike had finished milking, and had gone home. The stable was closed. Inside, we could hear the animals stamp. Suddenly I put my head under the pump spout, and asked her to work the handle. Laughing, she did so, and as I raised my dripping head, I saw her standing with the low western sun full upon her, her eyes laughing into mine, her nose and lips provocative, her plain blouse waist open at the throat so that I could see the gurgle of laughter rise. "Why did you do that?" she asked, arrested, perhaps, by something in my gaze. "Because," I answered, "there's a ghost lives in this well, and maybe with your aid I shall pump it out." "Don't you like the ghost?" she said. "Very much," said I, as we climbed the slope to Bert's. That evening Mrs. Bert sent her off to bed, and I toiled cheerfully at my manuscripts till the unholy hour of eleven. Chapter VIII I PICK PAINT AND A QUARREL The next morning at breakfast a burned nose confronted me across the table, and the possessor ruefully regarded her sore palms. "No work for you to-day," said I. "You will just have to pick out colours for me. The painters are coming."