"You may saw just one piece," said I, "and then you are going to take a book and rest. I'm going to work, myself. Twin Fires is getting in shape fast enough now so I can give up part of the daytime to the purely mundane task of paying the bills." I wheeled up a big dead apple branch from the orchard to the wood shed, put it on the buck, gave her the buck-saw, and watched her first efforts, grinning. "Go away," she laughed. "You bother me." So I went, opened the west window by my desk to the wandering summer breeze, and went at my toil. Presently I heard her tiptoeing into the room. "Done?" said I. She nodded. "Now I want--let's see what I want--well, I guess 'Marius the Epicurean' and 'Alice in Wonderland' will do. I'm going to sit in the orchard. You work here till five or your salary will be docked. Good-bye." I heard her go out by the front door, and then silence settled over the sun-filled, cheerful room, while I plugged away at my tasks. I don't know how long I worked, but finally my attention began to wander. I wondered if she were still in the orchard. I looked out upon the sweet stretches of my farm, with the golden light of afternoon upon it, and work became a burden. "Shall I ever be able to work, except at night, or on rainy days!" I wondered with a smile, as I tossed the manuscript I was reading into a drawer, and went out through the front entrance. The girl was nowhere to be seen. "She's probably in her beloved pines," I reflected. "It would be a good time to clear out a path in the pines." I turned back to get a hatchet, and then went down toward the brook. I trod as noiselessly as I could through the maples, thinking to surprise her at her reading, and took care in the pines not to step on any dead twigs. She was nowhere to be seen near the upper end of the grove, but as I advanced I heard a splashing louder than the soft ripple of the brook, and suddenly around a thick tree at a bend in the stream, where the brook ran out toward the tamarack swamp in the corner of my farm, I came upon her. She had her shoes and stockings off, and with her skirts held high she was wading with solemn, quiet delight in a little pool. Her back was toward me. I could have discreetly retreated, and she been none the wiser. But, alas! Actæon was neither the first nor the last of his sex. The water rippled so coolly around her white ankles! The sunlight dappled down so charmingly upon her chestnut hair! And I said, with a laugh, "So that is why you wanted my brook to come from the spring!" She turned with a little exclamation, the colour flaming to her cheeks. Then she, too, laughed, as she stood in the brook, holding her skirts above the water. "Consider yourself turned to a stag," she said. "All right," I answered, "but don't stay in that cold water too long."