"I reck'n," assented the other, doubtfully. "Yassuh, Mis' Blair she _libs_ heah, but she's playin' on de type-writer dis mawnin'. Will I run an' tell her comp'ny is came?" "Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Not if she is playing on a typewriter." "Mr. Archie, _he_ libs heah, too, when he ain't a trabelin' on de railroad train," volunteered the black one, "He's out behine, makin' him a little house to put a hawg in. Heah him?" Mr. Nikolai nodded. There was a good deal of intermittent hammering and whistling going on in the background. "You need not announce me, thank you. Perhaps my namesake will lead me to him?" He held out a forefinger to the younger Stefan, who examined it, found it good, and clasped a trusting fist about it. So linked, the two moved off at a pace suitable to experimental footsteps. In this slow progress they presently came upon a somewhat nondescript figure at work in a potato-patch. It wore blue jeans overall trousers, surmounted by what had once been a leghorn picture-hat, from which straggled a lock or two of sparse gray hair. Mr. Nikolai stared at this figure for a puzzled moment; and then burst out laughing. "Why, Ellen Neal! I did not recognize you as a farmerette." "Land sakes!" She sat down abruptly among the potato-plants, whether out of surprise or for purposes of concealment it is impossible to state. But her welcome when it came was for once not grudging. Perhaps she recalled a certain timely offer of help; or perhaps this graybeard, with his slight, tired stoop and his lined eyes, no longer seemed to her a menace to the sheepfold. Be that as it may, her greeting was not outdone in warmth even by Archie's. "I've simply _got_ to tell Joan!" cried Archie. "She'll never forgive me if I don't interrupt her just this once." "Not when it is coming like that," forbade Nikolai, listening to the rapid click of a typewriter from the house beyond. "Neither battle, murder, nor sudden death must be allowed to interfere with a flow of thought that is coming a hundred words to the minute." "Well, I suppose you know," conceded the husband, reluctantly-- An hour later, however, Ellen took matters into her own hands. She appeared at the kitchen door (dressed, Nikolai was flattered to observe, in a costume of purple crêpe with Battenburg touches), and loudly rang a dinner-bell. "That'll fetch her! Joan ain't ever too much up in the clouds to hear a dinner-bell; and I don't mean to have my jelly-omelette kep' waitin' on no flows of thought," she remarked. Joan came out to them, a little untidy as to dress and hair (why is it that the Muse can never be pursued in perfect neatness?) and moving vaguely, as if half in a dream. There was a faint vertical wrinkle between her brows which was new to Nikolai, but her pallor had given place to warm tan, and both face and figure showed a slight suggestion of fullness, a little matronly poise that was more charming than her Botticelli _maigre_ had been.