I knocked at the first door on the street. A farmer's wife appeared, and kindly offered to consult her husband on the subject of work. She soon returned with a favorable reply, and invited me to follow her into the kitchen. Carpetless as it was, and stained as to walls and ceiling, and low, and dimly lighted, the shelter of that room was like softest luxury. A pitcher of milk and some slices of bread were placed on the table, and I ate ravenously. At one end of the table sat the farmer in his shirt-sleeves, with a newspaper spread before him. He was in the midst of his haying, he said, and had plenty of work, and was willing enough that I should join the other men in the hay-field. The shed for the hands was full, so I offered to go to the barn, and was soon fast asleep on the loose hay in a stall. As the farmer and I walked to the barn, I had taken occasion to fortify myself in the agreement regarding work. He was an old man, very hale and hearty and genial, and he walked with a curiously stiff movement of the legs, and with his feet nearly at right angles to the line of progress. He set my mind at rest with the assurance that there would be plenty of work for me, if the morning proved good. The morning was all that could be desired. I got up early, and went to the kitchen, where an Irish maid-of-all-work gave me a bit of soap and some water in a tin basin, with which to finish my preparation for breakfast. She was a beautiful girl, large and awkward and ill-groomed; but her features were strikingly handsome, and her clear, rich complexion would of itself have constituted a claim to beauty, while sprays of golden hair fell in effective curls about her forehead, and heightened the charm of her deep-set Celtic blue eyes. I was drying my face and hands on a coarse towel which hung on a roller near the kitchen-door, and which was used in common by all of the hired men. She watched me curiously. Presently she ventured an inquiry as to whether "the boss" had given me "a job." I said that he had. "Her eyes were homes" of deep concern, and in her voice was that note of pity so effective in the Celtic accent. She was saying that my hands did not look as though I was used to work. I was blushingly conscious that my hands were against me, but she tactfully tried to relieve the situation by supposing that I was a "tradesman." Then had to come the damaging confession that I was not. But the other hired men now began to enter, and we sat down to breakfast.