"Surely. She will run the whole thing." "Well," said Abner slowly, "I don't know but that I might find it interesting." This, Giles understood, was his rustic manner of accepting. IX Abner spent Christmas at the Giles farm, as Stephen had understood him to promise; and Medora, as her brother had engaged, "went along" too, and "ran the whole thing" from start to finish. Abner, with a secret interest compounded half of attraction, half of repulsion, promised himself a careful study of this "new type"--a type so bizarre, so artificial, and in all probability so thoroughly reprehensible. Medora made up the rest of the party to suit herself. She had heard of Adrian Bond's struggles toward the indigenous, the simplified, and she was willing enough to give him a chance to see the cows in their winter quarters. Clytie Summers had begged very prettily for her glimpse too of the country at this time of year. "It's rather soon, I know, for that spring barn-yard; but I should so enjoy the ennui of some village Main Street in the early winter." "Come along, then," said Medora. "We'll do part of our Christmas shopping there." Giles accepted these two new recruits gladly. "Good thing for both of them," he declared to Joyce. "They'll make more progress on our farm in a week than they could in six months of studio teas." This remark admitted of but one interpretation. "Why!" said Abner; "do you want her to marry _him_?"--him, a fellow so slight, frivolous, invertebrate! "Oh, he's a very decent little chap," returned Giles. "He'll be kind to her--he'll see she's taken good care of." "But do you want him to marry _her_?"--her, so bold, so improper, so prone to seek entertainment in the woes of others! "Oh, well, she's a very fair little chick," replied Giles patiently. "She'll get past her notions pretty soon and be just as good a wife as anybody could ask." One of those quiescent, featureless Decembers was on the land--a November prolonged. The brown country-side, swept and garnished, was still awaiting the touch of winter's hand. The air was crisp yet passive, and abundant sunshine flooded alike the heights and hollows of the rolling uplands that spread through various shades of subdued umber and meditative blue toward the confines of a wavering, indeterminate horizon. The Giles homestead stood high on a bluff; and above the last of the islands that cluttered the river beneath it the spires of the village appeared, a mile or two down-stream. "Now for the barn-yard!" cried Clytie, after the first roundabout view from the front of the bluff. "Adrian mustn't lose any time with his cows." Giles led the way to a trim inclosure. "Why, it's as dry as a bone!" she declared. "Would you want us water-logged the whole year through?" asked Abner pungently. "And as for ennui," she pursued, "I'm sure it isn't going to be found here--no more in winter than in summer. However"--with a wave of the hand toward the spires--"there is always the town."