"With pleasure. I haven't," murmured Austin, "had a chance to tell him that so far. He's never been far enough off--except when he was getting ready to come. That's probably what he's doing now. I'll go upstairs and see." Austin had guessed right. Thomas stood in front of the mirror, shining with cleanliness, knotting a red silk tie. He had reached that stage in a young man's life when clothes were temporarily of supreme importance. Gone was the shy and shabby ploughboy of a year before. This self-assertive young gentleman was clad in a checked suit in which green was a predominating color, a black-and-white striped shirt, and chocolate-colored shoes. His hair, still dripping with moisture, was brushed straight back from his forehead and the smell of perfumed soap hung heavy about him. "Hullo," he said, eyeing his brother's intrusion with disfavor, "how dirty you are!" Austin, whose khaki and corduroy garments made him look more than ever like a splendid bronze statue, nodded cheerfully. "I know. But some one's got to work. We can't have two lilies of the field on the same farm.--Sylvia wants to speak to you." "Do you know why?" asked Thomas, promptly displaying more dispatch. "I think she intends to suggest that you should take her to the moving-pictures in Wallacetown to-morrow night. She doesn't get much amusement here, and now that she's feeling so much stronger again, I think she rather craves it." "Of course she does," said Thomas, "and if you weren't the most selfish, pig-headed, blind bat that ever flew, you'd have seen that she got it, long before this. Where is she?" It seemed to the impatient Thomas that the next evening would never arrive. All night, and all the next day, he planned for it exultantly. He was to have the chance which the ungrateful Austin had seen fit to cast away. He would show Sylvia how much he appreciated it. Through the long afternoon, suddenly grown unseasonably warm, he toiled on the motor until it was spick and span from top to bottom and from end to end. He was careful to start his labors early enough to allow a full hour to dress before supper, cautioned his mother a dozen times to be sure there was enough hot water left in the boiler for a deep bath, and laid out fresh and gorgeous garments on the bed before he began his ablutions. He was amazed to find, when he came downstairs, that Sylvia, who had tramped over to the brick cottage that afternoon, was still in the short muddy skirt and woolly sweater that she had worn then, poking around in the yard testing the earth for possibilities of early gardening. "The frost has come out a good deal to-day," she said, wiping grimy little hands on an equally grimy handkerchief; "I expect the mud will be awful these next few weeks, but I can get in sweet peas and ever-bearing strawberries pretty soon now."