 CHAPTER XIV. From that time began a new experience for the Putnam kitchen. Here two-four, eight o'clock, or even as early as half past seven, on evenings when the agricultural paper had grown old, its lonely inmate could have been seen preparing to retire to the Woodhouse Chamber. All this was changed. Nine o'clock, indeed, often ten, and occasionally eleven, saw him bending over book and slate, intent on rows and rows of figures which daily succumbed to his control. Over this fact Winterkeland was growing jubilant. It was such a continued surprise and delight to find that, as he studied and thought and worked, gradually his brain cleared, in what looked at first like a hopeless confusion of words, developed into ideas which he could understand and make his own. He made rapid progress, so rapid, that he was almost astonished at himself. Yet I do not think, after all, that it was phenomenal progress, given the same conditions, and any determined mind could have accomplished the same. The truth is he might have been said to live and move and have his being in an atmosphere of figures. While he sawed or split the wood, or made broad smooth paths through the snow, or held the reins while the pony waddled from point to point, doing errands for his mistress, he was always at work over some problem which had interested him the night before. Even while eating his solitary dinner, he was frequently seen to drop his fork, take a bit of pencil from one pocket and a tiny homemade tablet from the other, and work rapidly over certain figures for a few minutes, his face generally lighting up under the result. His habits and other respects began to change. He did not neglect the weekly newspaper, in fact he looked for it with as much interest as before, but he began to discriminate between the readings, to select that which would be of service to him and pass the rest as something for which he had no time. The advertisements over which he used to pour had lost their charm. Work pressed in these days, people must look after their own advertisements. He would just give a glance to see if there was anything new in the line of garden implements, such as he would like to have if he could get them, and then push on. In the same way he read the book which Miss Force had brought him from the library. It proved to be a collection of articles on miscellaneous subjects. He read with care and with several repetitions what he could find about hotbeds, making notes for his private use, but returned the book at the end of the stipulated week with the statement in answer to inquiries that he had not taken time to read anything but that which he wanted to use, and Miss Force listened to the answer with smiling satisfaction. When she carefully selected the book, it had been with a view to interesting him in several other topics of which it treated. But remembering that this boy, who a week before, had confessed to her that he knew nothing about long division, had that morning waylaid her at the gate to ask a question concerning complex fractions, she was fully satisfied as to his lack of time. As the weeks passed she watched him curiously. His interest did not flag for a moment. She was often interviewed as to the meaning of this or that term, and once as to the possibility of there being a mistake in the answer which the book gave to a certain problem. But on her assuring him that she knew the book to be correct, he had taken it away again without further comment, and had been up until quite eleven o'clock that night. But when he brought wood the next morning, he answered her question with a quiet, yesum, I found out my mistake after going over the work just eleven times. The boy will be a mathematician, she said gleefully to herself, and waited. Miss Putnam was watching too, a little doubtfully at first. She was not sure whether a little learning might not be a dangerous thing. But as her work was done with the same neatness and precision as before, and as quiet schemes for improvement went steadily on, she grew less doubtful. And when, one day, sitting at his dinner in the kitchen, after listening to her being involved in a maze of confusion by the glib-tongued collector at the door, he suddenly appeared on the scene to assure the collector, respectfully enough but firmly, that he had made a mistake and given sixty-three cents less change than he should. And when, much talking between them, Miss Putnam standing aside the while, the glib-tongued young man confessed himself in the wrong and handed out the sixty-three cents with an apology, Miss Putnam's doubts took flight entirely. It was that very evening that she changed the little kitchen lamp for a large shaded one, saying as she set it down, there, if you want to pour over your figures until midnight, that lamp will hold oily enough to last you. But it isn't a good plan for young folks to get in the habit of sitting up late. Miss Force, quietly biding her time, resolved presently on another move. It would not do to have her student a one-sided man, educated in hard figures only. On a stormy evening in early March, Winter brought some lovely knots for her open great fire, arranged them skillfully to make the room a blaze of light, then rising took from his pocket the arithmetic, and with a simple statement that he was much obliged to her for the book and had finished it, was about to leave the room. "'Finished, is it?' she said, controlling the temptation to express surprise. But may you not want to review it? You may keep the book until I go home if you wish. I have no present use for it.' "'No,' he said, thanking her. He had no further use for it. He had reviewed and reviewed it, until he knew he could do every example in it almost in the dark. Miss Force again controlled any outward manifestation of pleasure. "'What next?' she asked. "'What next?' he repeated, and turned from the door to look at her a half smile on his face. Then, seeing that she waited for a further answer. That is just exactly what I don't know. I suppose a farming book of some sort, but I don't feel sure what. I would make Algebra the next thing.' Algebra. He spoke the word half under his breath with a sort of ah. He knew the meaning of it, and had looked upon it as dwelling on heights, and consequently not for him. I certainly should. You have shown a taste for mathematics which ought to be cultivated. It will not injure the quality of your farming in the least, providing farming should be the thing. Meantime, I should select something for general reading to rest my mind a little between the lessons. Rest it, and at the same time cultivate it in another line.' "'What line?' "'Oh, as to that. I think you might follow your tastes. Come to my little shelf and see what you can find for a sort of between times. And if you decide in favour of the Algebra, here is a copy which I can spare.' His eyes thanked her, but he said no words. However, he crossed to the little shelf, his face aglow with some feeling greater than embarrassment. It was well fitted with a careful selection from standard authors. With some idea of attempting this experiment soon, Miss Force had but a few hours before rearranged it, so that the works which she judged might possibly be more nearly in line with his tastes occupied a central position. He touched none of them, but took from around the corner, for the shelf turned the corner and crossed the jog in the chimney. The book which she perhaps would have been the least likely to select for him. It was one of her reading course, but was much more like a textbook than a selection for reading. And, in short, it had not even occurred to her in connection with her plans for winter. He opened the volume at random. Too much embarrassed, Miss Force thought to have a clear idea of what he was doing. However, it was plain that his attention was almost instantly arrested, that he forgot himself and the presence of another. As he read he suddenly grasped with his right hand his left arm above the elbow, bending the arm at the same moment, then stretched it out to its full length, keeping his fingers on the muscles. That's true, he exclaimed, and, seeming at the moment to remember Miss Force's presence, turned a very red face toward her. She had been watching him curiously, and now advanced and glanced at what he had been reading. If you grasped the arm tightly with your hand just above the elbow joint and bent the forearm, you will feel the muscle on the inside swell and become hard and prominent. Oh, you were interested in the action of the muscles, were you not? Physiology is a very interesting and sensible study. That book is arranged for a fourteen weeks course in school, and wonderfully well adapted to its work, I think. I like it, said Winter absently. He was already reading another sentence and experimenting as to its truth. Take it with you, if you like, said Miss Force cordially. It is not exactly a book to read, yet you will like to look at the diagrams, perhaps, while you are resting from the algebra. It is one of the books marked out for my reading circle, but I have finished it. So Winter went away with his prizes, and Algebra tucked under his arm, and human physiology in his hand, leaving Miss Force to laugh and say, I must tell Miss Putnam of that, he is getting ahead of her, actually taken one of the books of the course to read, when I haven't succeeded in getting her to do more than look at the pictures. What a queer boy he is! Really I believe he would have made a scholar with half a chance. What if he should plunge into Algebra as he did arithmetic, actually work his way through a regular course of mathematics? Elise Force, you would better do all you can for him. He may be famous some day. How very funny it was to see him put Steele's statements to the test of experiment. Professor Bowen would have been delighted. There is a scholarly mind for you, he would have said. Scholarly by nature. Well it may be so. At least I will foster the taste all I can. But it is very queer. What possessed him to reach around into the corner and take that particular book? It was not one I had planned for. Nor had Winter planned for it. Even years afterward he called it an accident. Yet, as he sat that evening literally pouring over the book, he discovered to himself a new taste. Here was a book which absorbed him as even figures did not. The arithmetic he had resolved to conquer and had experienced steady pleasure in finding himself able to overcome its obstacles. But this history of the human frame, this careful explanation of bones and muscles and tissues bewitched him, overwhelmed him. He began with the first sentence. The skeleton or framework of the house we live in is composed of about two hundred bones, and read on with almost breathless interest through coarse and fine print, until he came to a series of practical questions. Over these he paused, read the first, found that he could not answer it, went back over the ground he had just traveled to discover the answer, found and absorbed it, then took the next question, and thus felt his way through the chapter going back as often as necessary, finally deliberately reading the entire portion over again and yet again, until, to his intense satisfaction, he could answer each of those questions. Then, with a long-drawn breath of satisfaction, he laid it aside. I'll look into this algebra now, he said, because I've made up my mind to know algebra, but I like that thing as I never liked a book before in my life. I'll read it through, and then I'll learn it by heart. This in the course of the long March evenings he literally did, and when, at Miss Force's suggestion, they compared notes as to their knowledge of the book, she arose from the ordeal with a sense of marked respect for her pupil. Mr. Steele would feel honoured indeed if he could hear you, she said heartily. You have literally made the book your own. It is a wonder you did not learn the poetical quotations also. Some of them I did, said Winter, with a little sparkle of satisfaction in his eyes. I learned this one the first morning after you lent me the book. Not in the world of light alone, where God has built his blazing throne, nor yet alone on earth below, with belted seas that come and go, and endless aisles of sunlit green, is all thy maker's glory seen, look in upon thy wondrous frame, eternal wisdom still the same. I think that is true. He said, drawing a deep breath, I used to think, when I was a little boy, that machinery was very wonderful, and that I would study into a good deal of it if I ever had the chance. But I have come to the conclusion that the human frame, as that verse calls it, is the most wonderful machinery ever made. By which you will see that he was overcoming his reserve so far as Miss Force was concerned. She had been so heartily interested in his algebraic studies, had given him helpful hints so many times at just the points where they were needed, that, so far as she was concerned, he had laid aside his long-nourced belief that no human being cared in the least about him. For some reason she cared enough to be steadily helpful and suggestive, and he had thawed toward her considerable. Certainly during the months just past he had made progress. He began to realize it fully himself, to take heart in several ways to have a glimmering belief that a respectable portion of an education was still within his grasp, to determine to have whatever he could secure in that line, or any other, by persistent industry and dogged resolution, to determine that he would not, after all, be a farmer, that he would be, in the years ahead, something for which he was not yet ready, but toward which he would work with all his might, and to that end he would read and study everything about the human frame on which he could lay his hands. He was not winter any more. The soft spring days were upon him. The long, lamp-lighted evenings were gone. There was a very busy outside world to look after. The season of plowing and planting and transplanting was already upon them. Winter was ready for it, and carried on his share of the work with vigor and skill. He was still studying the agricultural papers. He had constructed his rude imitation of a hotbed, and, as a result, surveyed with much pride certain plants which were fully three weeks ahead of even the milk-mans. But all these things were now simply as means to an end. Whether he would ever accomplish the desire of his heart remained so much a matter of doubt that he was entirely silent on the subject, even Miss Force being able to guess at it only from the class of books which he steadily asked her to bring him from the library. Meantime he had made excellent progress with his algebra, and had even begun on a Latin grammar which Miss Force would not have ventured to offer, but which he boldly asked for one evening. During this entire time she, looking on with the deepest interest, pleased, surprised, proud of him, had been as utterly silent before him in regard to the one all-important subject, the ABC of all wisdom, as though she had no knowledge in that direction, were not pledged to count it always of supreme importance. Is this unnatural, do you say? I can only answer that to me there seemed to be a great many unnatural people in the world. CHAPTER 15 SAGE CONCLUSIONS I do not mean that she forgot this important subject utterly, that indeed would have been unnatural, perhaps impossible, in an honest Christian. She gave it many passing thoughts, wished there were some way of interesting winter in these matters, bemoaned the fact that he seemed to have not one spark of natural interest in religion. Twice she said to him, Why don't you stay to Sunday school? The boys in the Bible class look as though they were having real pleasant times. But when he answered briefly that he did not know the boys, and did not belong to their kind of folks, she accepted the statement as important and let the question drop. She sighed over the fact that he took scraps of paper to church, on which he sat and figured during the sermon. She accepted it as another proof that he was utterly indifferent in regard to all these things. Once or twice she had been on the verge of asking him if he did not think the Bible would be an important book to study, but the fear of repelling him or setting up a barrier between them so that she could not help him in any direction deterred her. People are so curiously afraid of being repellent on such subjects. I have constantly observed this, and unless Satan has a good deal to do with it, I do not understand it. At least I do not propose to enter into an analysis of Miss Force's mind for you. The fact remains that, whatever the cause, she let the winter and the spring and the early summer pass without speaking one earnest sentence to Winter Kellend on the subject which she believed to be of supreme importance. And she was, at the same time, sufficiently interested in him to start him in arithmetic, to lend a helping hand through the intricacies of algebra, and to keep his possible tastes in mind whenever she visited the city library. If you can make her conduct seem consistent, by all means do so. I can give you some of Winter's conclusions. He was by no means so indifferent nor so blind as Miss Force supposed. He occasionally listened to the preacher between cipherings. When an illustration bearing on practical life was used, he listened intently. He believed in the preacher as a scholarly man who liked books, had a great many of them, and liked to read to the people a sermon which he had prepared from them. That, that he was deeply interested in his, Winter's, soul for instance, Winter did not believe. Why should he? He had once brought the minister from the cars to his own house, and had been asked questions intelligently concerning the raising of cabbages. The minister was at that time engaged in transplanting some young plants. Winter had no difficulty in seeing and believing that he was interested in them. He had often watched Miss Force in the same way. His little two-inch square book, you will remember, helped him to be wise in this direction. She impressed him as one who was unselfishly disposed to do all she could for him in the lines which she deemed important. She believed in education, and had urged him to reach after one. She believed in arithmetic, and had encouraged him through it. She believed in algebra, and had given him many a wise lift in his tug with it. She believed in her reading circle, and often talked with him about it, and was pleased that he had almost committed one of its chosen books to memory. Did she believe in the importance of his glorifying God with his body and with his spirit, as the little book read? How was Winter to tell? By their fruits ye shall know them, read the book, and the fruits this Christian bore were, algebra, physiology, English history, and the like. Miss Force would have been dumbfounded over his conclusions, but really I do not know how he could have avoided them. As for Miss Putnam, she also was a professing Christian. Winter had sat near her in church one sabbath, and had seen her accept the bread and wine with reverent face. Her life, carefully watched, bore certain unmistakable fruit. She was interested in her cow and her garden and her flowers. She was interested in his clothes. They were always clean and in order. In his breakfasts and dinners. They were always abundant and wholesome. She was interested in industry and in thrift, and commended him heartily for work which pleased her. She was even interested in a silent sort of way in his books. Did she not nightly furnish him with a large shaded lamp, and say not a word when he occasionally burned it until midnight? Was she also interested in his soul? I will have nobody about me who does not go to church regularly on Sundays. I don't believe in heathenism in a Christian land. This was the utmost possible which could be construed into a religious conversation which she had ever held with him. Like the minister she had talked about the cabbages and the potato bug and the current worm and the rose slug. These were his duties. Were the other things? Remember he had no inner experience of his own from which to judge. He knew nothing about the earnest struggles which Miss Putnam had with her rugged nature to keep her patient with the hundred shortcomings and downright failures of her fellow men and women. He did not hear her pray for strength to keep her from giving deacon trumble a piece of her mind, nor for patients to endure her tenance slowness about his payments as long as it ought to be endured. He knew nothing of Miss Force's honest desire to press the interests of her circle, the cause of education, the general advancement of the world in right ways, because she believed that all these things were for the glory of God. It was only with distinct facts, as they came before his vision, that he could deal. How was he to help his conclusions? They were not that these two were hypocrites. They were simply that, in a sense of which the writer of the line never dreamed, things were not what they seemed. In other words, that the verses in the little book were capable of some other meaning than that which appeared on the surface. This one thing I do meant somehow I do a thousand things, all of them of more importance than this one of which I seem to be talking. Do you see the bewilderment of his mind? What was there for him to do but the thing he did do? Push it all from him as a matter with which he had no present dealing. Let the people who had time and were inclined that way attend to such topics. For himself he was otherwise employed. So the busy springtime passed and the summer was fairly upon them. Three weeks more and school would close for the long vacation, and Miss Force would go to her eastern home. But I have promised to come back, she said to Miss Putnam as the two sat over their early breakfast in the cool of the summer morning. I was in a great doubt about it because of that other opening near home, and of course it would be pleasanter to be several hundred miles nearer Mama. Though after all, as you say, it doesn't make very much difference after one is seated in the cars. But you will be amused over what finally decided me in favor of this place. Oh, of course I would rather a hundred times be here than to go among strangers. And you know how I would miss you and my pretty room and everything. But the thought which finally weighed down the scales had to do with your winter. I am so interested in that boy. You can't think how anxious I am to see him get an education. I believe he is going to do it. Something more, you know, than a mere knowledge of rudiments. He has it in him, and it would be such a curious triumph of our reading circle. For, though to many, the road would seem circuitous, the circle has really been the center of action. He is certainly busy enough about his books to accomplish something, and it hasn't spoiled him for work, either. Miss Putnam assented cordially. I was afraid at first that you would give him notions about being destined for a higher sphere or some of that kind of stuff. But he has been just as faithful as before, and I don't know but he has been sharper about some things. It wouldn't be easy for anybody to cheat him out of a half-send, I know. I mean to help him, said Miss Force energetically. When I come back in the fall I shall bring a trunk full of books which will be especially suited to his needs. I shall get a friend of mine to help me select some works on anatomy from Papa's library. It seems strange that his tastes are developing in that line, for it is the exact line in which I can help him. With books and such books are expensive, you know. I think it must be more than a passing fancy, for I never had a scholar who made anything like the progress which he has in the study of physiology. The truth is that lending him books is about the only way in which I can help him now in that line. He is getting beyond my depth, and I was pretty well read for a girl who had no natural tastes in those directions. I think Papa was always a little sorry I had not. He tried to cultivate some in me. However, winter needs help in other directions. A doctor has need to know more than medicine. You don't suppose he ever expects to make a doctor of himself? exclaimed Miss Putnam, not a little startled. To have her tramp develop in this way was so entirely out of the line of conventionality. So unlike her old-fashioned knowledge of these things, so many years in common school, so many in the academy, so many in college, so many attending lectures, that she was somewhat in doubt whether to be pleased or to think Miss Force a harmful visionary. Why not? returned that young lady, coolly, helping herself to another dish of strawberries. Aren't these berries delicious? Winter succeeds with strawberries, doesn't he? I shall not be amazed if he develops into a thoroughly well educated doctor in time, though I do not think he has an idea of it as yet. He has not fully awakened to the fact that a young man with brains and determination can do almost anything he wishes in this country. He is certainly bewitched with all the studies which tend in a medical direction, and I believe in his cultivating the taste and seeing what will come of it. To that end I mean to help him. Miss Putnam stirred her coffee thoughtfully. I mean to help him myself a little, she said, with the slowness of speech which indicates deliberate decision. I have some things in mind, though if you are right, perhaps they are not the proper things for him. I thought maybe when I was through with the old place, Don doesn't need it nor want it. Not that I could ever let the old place go entirely out of the family. It belongs to the name, and I hope Don will never let go of it. But I thought if when made a farmer of himself, perhaps it might be managed, that it is a pity you are not going to be here this summer while Don is at home. You and he might have some pretty good times together. Maybe you might be able to awaken his interest in your protégé. There was a wickedly mischievous look in Miss Putnam's gray eyes as she got off those innocent sentences. The blood glowed on the younger lady's cheek, but she answered promptly enough, Of course I wouldn't miss being at home with Mama for anything else in the world. But I have no fears about your being able to interest Mr. Bradley in winter. I have never known a young man more interested in struggling boys than he. Don is interested in everything good, said Miss Putnam, a beautiful, tender light coming into her eyes as she thought of her idol. Well, my plan is to talk things over with Don and see how they could be arranged so that winter might be a fixture on the place so long as he wanted to be. I thought of putting something about it into my will. I made my will quite a little while ago, and left him a curious kind of a present. And again the laughing look came into her eyes. But I have thought of changing it a little if Don approved. Mr. Bradley will be sure to approve of whatever unselfish helpful thoughts you have, said Miss Forrest heartily. I'm so glad that my boy Wynn has such a good, strong friend as you. I mean to start him in several other directions during these three weeks. Give him enough to work on all summer. They left the table with that, and went their busy ways, still full of their kindly plans for the boy who steadily holed in the large vegetable garden, but who no longer whistled while he holed, for the reason that he had not time for whistling. He was at that moment mastering one of the conjugations of a Latin verb. Miss Forrest stopped as she passed the gate on her way to school, and spoke some pleasant words, and went away still thinking of him. That young fellow ought to be a Christian. This was her thought. Of course all people ought to be, but he will have influence in the world, I believe. He ought to be one for Christ before he goes any farther. I wish I knew how to approach him on such a subject. Tonight I mean to try to have a real earnest talk with him. Two hours later, Winter brought from the office one of those yellow-covered letters which are sure to strike terror into the hearts of people unused to receiving them. He halted at the side door where Miss Putnam stood, only long enough to say, Here is the meat, and I have a telegram for Miss Forrest. I thought I would drive to the schoolhouse with it. It may be something which he ought to know right away. Of course, said Miss Putnam, dear me, I hope the poor child has no bad news. But Winter could not reply, for the reason that he and the fat pony were already far down the road leading to the Fremont Street School. It was short and cruelly explicit, as well as cruelly lacking in details as telegrams always are. Mother is very sick, come immediately. It was Winter who remembered that an eastbound train would be due in an hour. It was he who gathered the poor young teacher's books, remembering the Bible in her desk and the notebook under a pile of papers. It was he who gave brief explanation to the principal at the door, while some of the older girls helped their teacher with her sack and hat. It was he who, a half hour later, managed to get the big trunk down the wide old staircase he hardly knew how. It was he who bought the ticket and checked the trunk, after driving with utmost speed and absolute silence through the long sunny street. From the first moment of his arrival at the school room door he had been alert, efficient, sympathetic, silent. On the platform Miss Force stopped and held out her hand. Good-bye, she said. You have been as good as gold, and as thoughtful as though you had taken care of people all your life. I shall not forget you. I'll never forget her, he said in grim, tearless sorrow, as he let the pony walk slowly toward home to atone for her unwanted speed. She had not waddled so fast in years as she had that morning. She has been a good friend to me. I don't know what I'm to do. I don't believe she will come back. Somehow it seems as though she wouldn't. I was going to ask her about that Latin rule this very evening. Well, there's one thing. She expects me to conquer that Latin grammar this summer, and I mean to do it. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of 87 by Pansy Her mother is dead when, said Miss Putnam, appearing at the kitchen door, led her in hand, just as winter was coming with a basket of kindlings. He stopped short in the path. Dead. He repeated, in ostrich and tones, which also conveyed a sense of dismay. Yes, poor thing, she only just arrived in time. She says if you hadn't made her catch that train, she would have been too late. She sends you her love and thanks. She remembers everything, poor young creature. And Miss Putnam lifted the corner of her white apron and wiped a great tear out of her eye. She isn't coming back when. She says her young sister is so lonesome now she will have to stay near her. I felt in my bones that she wouldn't come back that day she went off. She says you can keep the books she lent you and welcome. She is sorry she can't be here to lend you any more. She set great store by you, Win. You ought to make something of yourself just to please her. She was very good to me, said Winter, his voice a little husky, despite his effort at self-control. And I haven't so many friends that I shall be likely to forget her. Well, as to that, you probably have more friends than you think for. Most people have, who deserve them. I think something of you myself. I am not a woman of many words, but I've got eyes, and I know you've been a good, faithful boy to me. I don't mean to forget it. I only hope you will be as faithful to yourself as you are to me. It isn't worthwhile to give all your mind to books even, though I'm willing you should think as much of them as you want to, but it would be a pity to get ready for only one world when the other is so nearby. Here was this girl telling me only a few days before she went home how young-looking and healthy her mother was, and how she meant to have her live with her when she was a sweet old lady with white hair, and how she meant her to have every comfort in the world. And here she's gone. I only hope she was ready to go, that it is nothing but comfort for her now. It is worthwhile to think of that, I can tell you, my lad, and it isn't sensible to keep putting it off, either, for sometimes these orders to move come suddenly. She darted in at that and closed the door, leaving winter standing kindlings in hand. He was a good deal astonished. Miss Putnam had never spoken such words to him before. He had never seen her so deeply moved. That she was thoroughly in earnest was plain. He thought a good deal about her words during the evening. They pushed in between the Latin verbs and the problems in algebra, and insisted on being thought about. Some way they fitted the little book in his pocket better than any words he had ever before heard Miss Putnam speak. Yet, after all, they were thought about sentimentally rather than in a business-like way, such as their importance demanded. Miss Putnam had been kind to him, he reflected, had been a good friend, and if he lived he should repay her tenfold for all her kindness. He was already beginning to have the feeling that the time would come when he would repay kindnesses in greatly increased measure. He decided again that he would stay on with her as long as he could, and make her garden more and more productive, and look after her interests in a hundred ways. It was after nine o'clock when he saw Miss Putnam again. Are you going to take those berries into Judge Burnham's to-morrow? She asked. To a curious observer it would have been interesting to note how frequently of late Miss Putnam began her remarks to winter with an interrogation instead of a command. Yes, um, he answered promptly. Bright and early. I shall have them picked and be off before the sun is up. Still she lingered. Suppose you come into the house to sleep to-night, she said at last. You might sleep in the little back room that Don used to have. I feel dreadful lonesome somehow. For the matter of that you might sleep there every night, might have it for your room. It would be handier than where you are now. Very well, ma'am, said Winter respectfully. I'll do just as you say. But his eyes danced a little. The woodhouse chamber was entirely comfortable, but to be given Don's neat little room upstairs, only three doors away from Miss Force's old room, was certainly promotion, and he liked it. Miss Putnam took the stove handle and lifted the cover from the stove in an absent way, looked in, then fitted it to its place again. The fire was neatly laid ready for mourning. You don't forget anything do you win, she said cordially. What book are you at now? Latin? What do you expect to do with Latin? It doesn't help about farming, and I think you are a borne farmer if there ever was one. But Miss Force thinks— And then she stopped. What does Miss Force think? Why, she has a notion that you may someday be a doctor, but I think working in the nice, sweet-smelling ground is a great deal better than poking over pills and powders and other disgusting things. Did Miss Force say that? With a flesh of keenest satisfaction in his eyes. Well, something of that kind, but I don't know as she would thank me for speaking of it. Don't you ever read the Bible, young man? Haven't you got a Bible? There was a red glow on Winter's face now. No, ma'am, he said, speaking low. I never owned a Bible. Well, you ought to. It is heathenish not to have a Bible of one's own, and not to read it too. Here, I'll give you one. She disappeared through the dining-room door, but returned in so short a time that she must certainly have had the Bible selected and in waiting. It was a small plain one neatly bound. There, she said, I hope you'll keep it and read it. It is worth a good deal more than Latin, though I have nothing to say against that. Well, you come upstairs to sleep tonight. I'm so kind of lonesome without Miss Force, and so sorry for her poor young thing, that it makes me feel pokerish. Good night! Good night! said Winter gently, almost tremulously. He was a good deal touched. She had never told him good night before. The first red and gold heralds of the sun were flushing with the east next morning, when the pony waddled toward town, carrying a basket of wonderful strawberries covered with their own leaves, on which the dew yet sparkled. After delivering them there were errands to do in town, a note to leave at the doctors, and an answer to wait for, and various other matters which detained him until the sun was fully two hours high, when the pony drew up before her own stable. Then something unusual in the appearance of the generally quiet house made Winter wait only to secure her from going, wagon, and all into her stall, before he ran up the sidesteps and entered the dining-room. Beside the door lay a basket overturned, from which potatoes and onions had rolled. It was part of the confusion which had made Winter sure that something unusual had happened. The housekeeper from next door stood in the room, pitcher in hand, a half-dazed look on her face. That is my basket, she said apologetically to Winter. I dropped it in my hurry and fright. I wanted to get to her as quick as I could, but it did no good. What is the matter? said Winter, his face paling. Where is Miss Putnam? Oh, you haven't heard? Of course you haven't, you've just got home. Why, she's gone. Poor fellow, your best friend. Don't faint young man for pity's sake. There's confusion enough in this house, not but what I'm sorry for you. What do you mean? asked Winter. I don't understand. But he sat down suddenly in the old-fashioned arm chair and felt curiously dizzy, and as though the foundations of the earth were slipping away. Why, I ran over here with my basket to see if she could let me have a little parsley. This door stood open, and I came to it, and she sat there in that chair looking white. What's the matter? I asked her. Have you been frightened or anything? For she looked deathly white. She shook her head, and then she said, sort of gasping the words out, I've taken suddenly sick. Can you help me to bed? I dropped my basket and ran to her, or she would have fallen out of the chair. Deacon Trumbull was just passing, and I called to him, and between us we got her into bed, and he ran for the doctor. And I put cold water on her head and hot water on her hands, but it did no good. She was gone before the doctor came. Heart disease, he said. She only opened her eyes once, and then she said, tell Win not to. But, you poor fellow, she couldn't finish it. And what she wanted you not to do, I don't know, maybe you do. In such a sudden, unnatural, and yet in a certain sense, natural and simple way, had Miss Putnam's orders come, and without delay or word of direction to those left behind, she had gone. Stranded once more, shelter and friendliness and a sense of belonging that had grown upon him, especially of late, swept away. This time he had not run away from his appointed home, it had run away from him. Through all the years which followed, winter carried always a vivid recollection of the minutest events of those days, immediately preceding the funeral of Miss Putnam. He was at home, and yet not at home. He had the care of everything in and about the house, yet had no authority and no control over a penny's worth. All the people who came and went with neighborly offers knew him, were sorry for him, but were nothing to him. He got himself something to eat from the well-stocked larder with which he was so familiar, and he slept in the little room upstairs, of which he had taken such proud possession that first night. A neighbor, more commonplace and more thoughtful than the others, had invited him to her house to sleep. But he had quietly declined. He had a feeling of which he could not have spoken for the world, that Miss Putnam, in her silent state in the front parlor, would feel less lonely if he stayed in the house. Don, the cherished nephew, came in haste, and was overwhelmed with grief and self-pity that he could not have come before. He, too, was kind to win. She often mentioned you in her letters, he said heartily, and told me you were faithful in every way. Poor, lonely Auntie, I am glad she had a faithful young helper with her to the last. The great tears were in his handsome eyes while he spoke. He was sorry for win, but, of course, infinitely more sorry for himself. He went away to dinner to the home of old acquaintances, and accepted their invitation for the night, and assented earnestly when they said his aunt's boy was very much depressed, poor fellow. He was deeply attached to Miss Putnam as well he might have been. And it was all over at last, the burial, the looking at and locking up of books and papers and packages, done in nervous haste on the part of the nephew, both because he must needs be in haste, and because it was misery to him to go through it all. He was glad of Winter's swift, silent, practical help. When Miss Putnam's lawyer came and the solitary relative went with him to the library, Winter wandered in the garden, aimlessly, and waited. He was to take the nephew to the train in the very early morning. I must go, the young man had said. Whatever other business there is to attend to, her lawyer must do. I cannot delay an hour longer. It is as much as my place in the college is worth to have been away so long. What are you going to do, Win? I don't know, said Winter apathetically. He might almost as well have added. I don't care. His manner said it for him. This young man who had been living so fast for the last few months felt stunned and thrown backward. The college student regarded him curiously. Well, he said, after a moment's silence. You will have no difficulty in securing another place, I should say. Almost anyone about here in need of help would be glad to get you. They all tell me how faithful you have been to my aunt. If you like, I— And then Winter had interrupted him hastily. I shall not stay about here, he said. I want to go away. Do you? I should have thought it better for you to stay where you are known. However— And then he had been called. Two hours later he came out from the library and went straight to the backyard where Winter was at work putting everything in order for the night. There were traces of deep emotion on his face. When, he said, I have been reading the will. I haven't looked at it before. I knew the most of it, for she told me long ago, but I could not want to touch it somehow. At last I have, and your name is in it. Mine, said Winter, in undoubted astonishment. Why should his name appear there? Miss Putnam had paid him fair wages, and been never a day behind in her payments. The wages had not been large. Not so large, she told herself, as the boy deserved. And she had added to herself that she would make up for that. But she had not done so, not in the way she meant. She had waited just one day too long. But none of these things did Winter know. Yes, the nephew said, your name was there. My young friend Winter Kelland, for whom I have great esteem. These are the words, and they are worth a good deal. My aunt always said exactly what she meant. She left you one hundred dollars in money. The boy caught his breath hard. A million dollars left to some boys would not have astonished them more than this hundred did him. Who would have supposed that anybody would ever leave him money? And the little spring wagon and the pony, he added. For my own? There was a curious quiver in Winter's voice. For your own to do with as you will. She adds that she knows you will take care of her. She thought a good deal of the pony. Yes, said Winter. He could not have added another word just then. There was a strange lump in his throat which took him curiously back to the day when his father was buried. He turned abruptly from the nephew, walked toward the neat little stable which he had just closed and locked, fitted the key in the lock, drew the door back a little way, entered and pushed it to again, then going over to where the fat pony contentedly munched her oats, put both arms around the animal's neck, leaned his head against her, and let the slow tears drop down on her gray mane. CHAPTER XVII. HAPPENINGS. Six weeks afterward, in the breathless stillness of a summer morning, Winter Kellant stood near the gate of the vegetable garden, answering last questions for a man who surveyed the fair scene with evident satisfaction. Six busy weeks, during which Winter had hod and raked, and watered and weeded, and watched the familiar grounds that had been home to him for years. The appointed caretaker, until the place could be judiciously rented. The hurried nephew had gone his way. Winter had received his directions, and answered his letters, and interviewed the man to whom he sent him, and done with patient conscientious care the hundred little things that needed doing. A heavy trust, certainly, for one whom everybody still called a boy. The shrewd nephew had made answer to some who tried to advise him against trusting too much in a boy, and a stranger. My aunt was the most successful woman of business I have ever known, and she has written me repeatedly that she would not be afraid to trust her win with all she had, where she could trust I can. And Winter had been faithful, but with this summer morning his responsibility ended. The place had been rented, and the new caretaker was on hand looking over his prospects. The little wagon with the fat pony harnessed to it stood before the door as they had stood so many hundred times in the past. But if the pony had known it she might have felt sad, for she was destined never to stand there again. A neat valise, quite new, was slipped under the seat. It had been bought for the occasion, and was carefully packed with all the clothing Winter had. Also, in the back part of the wagon, was a small box filled with books. Winter stood, as I said, near the gate, answering last questions preparatory to a final start. Yes, sir, those are the early rows. No, sir, we are the only ones within five miles of here who have that variety. Yes, sir, they are the crook-neck squash, the best to be had in the market. Yes, that ground where they are planted proved to be the best spot for them. I had to enrich the soil considerably, but it is first class now. I wish you had decided to stay with me, said the man regretfully, as he glanced at the tall form ready for a journey and noted the quickness of his replies. I should have thought you would rather stay at the old place than anywhere else, and I'd have done well by you. A flush spread over Winter's face. Thank you, he said. I like the old place, and I shall never forget it, but I could not see my way clear to staying. I hope it will do well by you, and I think it will. That sweet corn on the right is the earliest by a week of any in the neighborhood, and it is a nice choice variety. Ms. Putnam intended to supply her friends out of that this fall. The sentence ended with a sigh, and the young man turned to go. Well, sir, if there's nothing more, I will bid you good morning. The sun is getting pretty well started. Goodbye, said the man still regretfully. I wish you success, and I hope you won't have occasion to be sorry that you deserted the ground you seem to understand so well. Then Winter went for the last time out of the neatly painted gate, climbed into the little wagon, gathered the reins as he had done so many times for a trip to depot or market, turned in the seat so as to get one long, steady look at the old-fashioned house until the corner was reached and turned. Then he gave the pony a hint, and she broke into a smart trot and they were off. I'm a tramp again. He said, half aloud, and with a curious laugh, which might almost have been a sob instead. I wonder if they call fellows who start out with their own team by the same encouraging name. He carefully surveyed himself from head to foot, that amused smile still on his face, and yet behind it a hint of sadness. There was certainly a marked difference between his present appearance and the way he looked the night he first presented himself at Miss Putnam's door. I've been making myself necessary to somebody. He murmured, the smile growing more defined. How distinctly he remembered the well-dressed boy who had satisfied the fence and delivered him that lecture. He felt in his breast pocket for the book two inches square. He always carried it there in token of the one who had spoken some encouraging words. He thought of his Bible carefully wrapped in paper in his new valise. He should always keep that Bible. He was glad Miss Putnam gave it to him. Occasionally he would read in it because she asked him to do so that last night. An hour of steady driving, and he came to a point where two roads met. Which to take was the question. He had no idea how to decide. I'm a tramp. He said again, laughing. Pony, which road do you think we would better take? Does it make any difference to tramps? I suppose it will make a difference always what I do this minute. And his face grew grave with the solemnity of the truth whose faint shadow he grasped. But how is one ever to know? Perhaps I ought to have inquired about some things, but I did not know anybody who would either know or care. I wonder if my friend in here could give any advice. He fumbled for the small book half ashamed of himself for his queer unusual mood. What did he know about the book? And how would it advise him? Yet he opened it at random and read the words, If thy presence go not with us, carry us not up hence. He shut the book quickly and hid it away. What a strange verse to appear to him just now. He had not asked this thing nor any other thing of the Lord. If he had defined his religious impressions so far as he had any, they would have been that the Lord cared nothing about him, did not take notice of his daily life. Yet here was somebody, he had no idea who, whose convictions on this subject were so strong that he actually dared to pray, If thy presence be not with me, don't let me go this way. Would it not be a comfort to have so powerful and helpful a friend as that, when who would assuredly direct him in every step? The thought for a moment touched the heart of this lonely young man. The next, I grieve to tell you, a mocking smile hovered on his lips. It is not true, he said firmly. I don't mean that it never was so, but such times are gone. If the people of today are led, so that they knew just what to do and where to go, they have the most shilly-shelly way of showing it that could be imagined. I don't believe a word of it. They do their own planning and contriving, and trust a common sense or luck just as I must do. Pony will go this way. And he turned sharply into the right hand road and trotted on. Why did he decide for this? He could not have told. Had he been questioned, he would have said that he just happened to do so. The years to come, with their solemn teachings, must pass over him before he will understand that there are no happenings to human lives. Three days afterward, in accordance with this theory of his, he happened to tie his horse before a certain restaurant in a large town, or rather city, which he had just reached, and going in for dinner, happened to take a seat at table where two men were eating and talking. If we could get Dr. Decker, one was saying, he would be the man to give us what we need. He is by far the most scholarly physician we have in this part of the world, and is a fine speaker with all, and has any amount of apparatus at command for illustration. But he is as much out of our reach as is the man in the moon. Why? Oh, too busy! He is the star doctor of all this region of country. People who, for convenience or economy, employ someone else at first, if they get very sick, send for him. And he is the consulting physician in all critical cases, as far as they can reach him. How did he get so famous? Well, laughing a little, despite the carping speeches often made about famous people, I really think he earned his fame. Success succeeds is a cranky speech of somebodies, I don't remember whose, and there is a great deal of underlying truth in it. He is well educated and smart, and has had unusual advantages, and was thrown providentially, he would say, among a class of diseases which had baffled some of the wisest, and he became deeply interested and studied them and had success. Why shouldn't he be famous? But just because he is so famous, there is no hope of our getting him to lecture to our circle. We must be content with some lesser light. What would you think of young Dr. Masters? He used to be one of Decker's students. I should think it might be well to get Decker's opinion of him as a speaker. He might not be too busy for that. Where's his office? Whose, Decker's? Why, on Dwayne Street, of course, the most fashionable portion of the city. 268 Dwayne Street. That isn't a bad idea of yours. Suppose we drive up there and call on him right away. Suppose we do, said Winter Kelland, rising at the same moment with the others. But his remark was made to himself. While paying his bill, he asked for explicit directions how to reach 268 Dwayne Street, then drove leisurely on in opposite direction. His plan was to give the strangers a chance to make their inquiries before he pressed his. It was therefore a half hour later when his gray pony halted before a handsome building, which bore on side and end the name he had searched for. Norman Decker, M.D. However, it chanced that the doctor's office hours had not been quite over when his other collars arrived, and they had to wait. The consequence was, Winter could see through the open door that they were at this moment conversing with Dr. Decker. He is a younger man than I supposed, our young tramp said, as he tied his pony and interviewed the bellboy. Can I wait here and see Dr. Decker when he is alone? It is after office hours, said the bellboy significantly. I suppose so, but I do not want to see him as a patient. It is on business, important business. Considering which the reluctant bellboy consented to his staying, bits of the talk floated out to him through the half-open door. Oh yes, the doctor was saying, I am interested in that reading circle. I spent a few days at its fountainhead last summer, and would have gone again this season if I could have gotten away. I think that entire scheme is worthy of a genius. It touches me in a very vulnerable spot. I have always been deeply interested in boys who were struggling toward an education, trying to overcome the disadvantages of not having begun early enough. I am glad to hear that. Interpolated the listener in the waiting room? It helps a great many of that class of workers, as well as furnishing a pleasant method of review for scholars. I am really very deeply interested in it, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to serve you if I could, but I am simply overwhelmed with work and care. It was very soon after this that the gentlemen were bowed out. The doctor attended them to the outer door of the waiting room, and, returning, gave a questioning glance toward winter. This was evidently his opportunity. He made quick use of it. I called, sir, to see if you did not want to hire a boy. What sort of a boy, said the doctor, with the quick air of one accustomed to decide things in haste? The sort of boy that I am. There might have been the faintest gleam of a smile in Winter's eyes, but he did not mean there should be. What sort of a boy are you? I am eighteen years old, have worked at farming for three years. I understand something about potatoes and cabbages and weeds. I can take care of horses and drive them, and I can try to do anything I am set at. I have a spring wagon and pony of my own out there at the door. Upon my word, said the doctor, that is an unusual addition to a boy. May I inquire where you got them, and why you decided to give me a call, since I am not a farmer, and have very little knowledge of potatoes and cabbage-heads, the kind you mean at least? And what your father and mother think of all this? The words were poured out rapidly enough to have disconcerted a less self-assertive young man than Winter, but his answers were as prompt as the questions had been. The horse and wagon were left to me by the woman with whom I have lived for three years. She died nearly two months ago. She was Miss Hester Putnam of Carroll County. I came here because I heard you were the greatest doctor in this part of the world, and I want to get a chance to study medicine. My mother died soon after I was born, and my father ten years ago. I haven't anybody in the world who cares what I do. Despite his rapid business tone, there was a little quiver in the voice just here. That is an extraordinary story, young man. How do I know that a word of it is true? You don't, of course, but if you cared whether it was or not, you might write to this place. It isn't so far away. Dr. Holden is the minister, and Dr. Simons, the doctor who used to come to our house, and the grocers and postmaster and the station agent knew me. I could give you their names. Everybody knew the old Putnam place where I lived. How do you know you want to study medicine? I found it out by reading a book on physiology. Human physiology was the name of it. A lady, a teacher, lent it to me. She said it was in their reading course. I read and studied it a great deal, and I have known ever since that medicine is what I must study. That circle again, said Dr. Decker, with a sudden lighting up of a pair of very expressive eyes. Well, as I said, this is somewhat out of the usual line. I do not know that I want a boy, but my children wouldn't object to the pony, I fancy. She looks like a gentle little beast. Haven't you a sister, young man? Winter shook his head. I never had a sister or brother. I had a sister, said Dr. Decker emphatically. The grandest woman this world owns. So you happened on a physiology? My sister borrowed one for me and made endless cookies to earn enough to buy the next book. A dreamy smile was spreading over his face as he went back into his past. Yes, James, I'm coming. This in answer to his coachman's inquiring look, and the businesslike air of the hurried doctor was back again. I haven't another inch of time. They are dangerous books, these physiologies. That first one of mine has kept me on the rush night and day ever since. You may go around to Widow Tryons on Bond Street, Mrs. Mary Tryon, 14 Bond Street, and ask her to put you up for the night. Leave your horse here, and my man will take care of him to-night. And at seven o'clock, sharp, you may come here, and I will talk with you. All this if you choose to run the risk. I'll be responsible for your supper and bed to-night, but I may not do another thing. Thank you, said Winter, rising. I shall be sure to come at seven o'clock. The doctor had already drawn on his gloves and now looked about for his hat. Winter sprang for it, and as he did so laid his hand on a medical paper which had been tossed carelessly on the table. Could I borrow this until evening? A curious smile hovered over the doctor's face. His quick eye had caught a glimpse of the heading which had evidently attracted this boy in search of a place. The latest theories on the management of typhoid fevers was the pretentious title. Oh, yes, he said, borrow it and welcome. And as the doctor stepped into his carriage, he muttered, he evidently has the disease. I believe I'll try if a few doses will cure him. How did he happen to get a chance to work for Dr. Norman Decker? This was Winter Kellan's way of putting it for years. Nevertheless, it gave him great satisfaction, as the days and months went by, that such a happening had come to him. Not that he was wonderfully promoted in any way. His life was quite as busy and almost as isolated from people as it had been in Miss Putnam's quiet home. Dr. Decker found plenty of work for him, hoeing, weeding, watering horses, answering night bells, driving the doctor's children to and from school on stormy days, driving the doctor occasionally in his own little spring wagon when it suited that gentleman's fancy. Oh, there was enough to do. Certainly, Dr. Decker, if he was a very busy man himself, knew how to keep other people busy. Yet, with all his work and care, Winter had never found more time for study than here. There were long, quiet evenings when he relieved the bell-boy from service, and was only interrupted by an occasional ring of the bell from those so urgent or so ignorant that they could ignore the doctor's office hours, to which he held himself with strictest care. There were mornings, quite often, when he was summoned from the garden or the table with the direction to make himself presentable and sit in the receiving room, while the young student-in-usual attendance went elsewhere. At these times the doctor himself grew into the habit of striding over to the library and selecting from its solemn crowds the special book which it would be well for Winter to read next. Over such books Winter studied as he had never studied before, and the red which died face and neck at first, when the doctor would suddenly ask him three or four terse questions about what he had been reading, came less readily as he grew accustomed to the attention. He even ventured on an occasional question himself, and was answered fully and kindly. These were growing days to Winter Kelland. Miss Mary Tryon, 14 Bond Street, had been quite willing to accept as a border anyone whom Dr. Decker chose to send, and Winter was installed in a back attic room of her tall and narrow city house. Not so cheerful a room is that which he had occupied for certain well-remembered nights in Miss Putnam's home, but quite good enough for Winter's needs. He spent less and less time in it as the days went by, and he was more and more frequently summoned to the waiting room to take the bellboy's place. Indeed, the bellboy grew to looking upon him as a special providence, and smiled broadly whenever he was relieved an hour earlier than usual and sent home. Certainly no one could have been more glad to see him relieved than was Winter. So on all sides was satisfaction. No, not quite. Socially he was still alone. He studied it over sometimes, looked about him longingly for companionship, wondered if he should ever have a friend. Almost every one he knew seemed to have someone with whom to be on very familiar terms, always accepting himself. He lived in two worlds, and neither of them fitted him, and they were both quite unlike the worlds in which he had lived before. Mrs. Tryon's table was filled to the verge of crowding with young men, gay, stylishly dressed young men, at least Winter thought during those days that they were stylishly dressed. They wore immaculate paper collars and spotless shirt fronts, with now and then a diamond, which, being made of paste, certainly cost very little, but Winter did not know this. Others of them wore very gay scarfs, tied bewilderingly, and poked a rosebud occasionally into their buttonholes, and combed their hair in a fashion which he could not, and wore thinner boots than he could afford, and did a hundred other little things to mark their position as in another world than his. They were very busy during the day measuring lawns and calicoes, and sorting thread and buttons and ribbons, or running hither and thither on errands for great men who thought of them only as animated machines to do their bidding. But a little of the greatness in which they spent their days seemed reflected on them. They talked glibly about this and that style, about a fine turnout, about pretty faces, about the merits of such an opera, even about public speakers as to whether they were the real thing or not. On all these topics Winter was dumb. They belonged to that other world of which he was not. He used occasionally to wonder why it was that none of these young men ever mentioned a book or a study. It might be just possible that in doing so they would name one at which the covers of which he had looked when he stood before the Great Library, but they never entered this field, and Winter did not for a moment think of leading the way. So they ate their hurried breakfasts together, and, more leisurely, their late dinners, and chatted merrily and nodded to Winter some of them when they came in, and occasionally asked him to pass the bread or help them to butter, and for the rest ignored his existence. Who is he? they asked of one another when he first came, and the answers had been various. He is Dr. Decker's new bell-boy, I think. I saw him opening the door for the Stuart carriage. I didn't know we had bell-boys at our table. This from a pale-faced man who wore a waxed mustache and sold buttons and braid at the notion-counter of a large store. Oh, he isn't. He is a stable-boy, I think. I saw him at work among the horses only yesterday. This from a mischievous fellow who shouted messages all day through a downtown telephone, and who liked to tease the owner of the waxed mustache. Upon my word, said that person, curling his mustache with the aid of his upper lip, I think we might at least have separate tables, let us inquire into things. Ten minutes later gave them opportunity. Mrs. Tryon herself, tall, pale, weary-eyed, in a colorless dress, came to serve the pie. She, being interviewed, responded with dignity. He was a student at Dr. Decker's office. She did not know she was sure, but he might answer bells and feed horses and do a hundred other things. She had not asked, and she did not propose to. She had received, on the second morning after his coming, a note from Dr. Decker, written by his own hand, in which he said that young Kelland was a new student whom he hoped she would try to make comfortable, as he was especially interested in him. And she meant to try to the best of her abilities. Nothing more was to be said, if Dr. Decker vouched for the stranger's position, who could make any remark? Mrs. Tryon's closed lips and keen eyes asked this question, and no one replied. So they nodded to him, those of them who did not forget it, and went on with their gay talk as though he had not been there. The other world was in Dr. Decker's office. Learned gentlemen, physicians, high in honor, came there to discuss cases with him. Little physicians who were keen brained and eager, and on the road to higher positions, came there to ask advice. Winter was often present at these interviews. In the next room it is true in the character of the bell-boy, but having ears he heard and pondered. He felt in his soul that he could be if he had a chance on the lower steps of the flight which led to this world. But as yet he must not even bow to the men who composed it. All the more their talk made him sure that he did not belong, and would not be likely ever to belong, to the world which he met at Mrs. Tryon's table. In the course of time he found what he thought at first was a piece of still another world. Founded in Mrs. Tryon's storeroom, with her he went to carry a message from the doctor. She was mixing bread. You have surmised long before this that her house was by no means among the heights in the world of boarding houses, and this weary household drudge had to turn cook or lawn dress or table waiter as the needs of the hour demanded. She was there for mixing bread, and winter knew it would be bread that was a trifle sour and underdone, and in many respects unlike the sweet loaves which Miss Putnam used to turn out. But the thing which astonished him was an open book, pinned open with a fork, and bespattered with water and besprinkled with flour. He was so astonished that he stopped in the middle of his sentence and stared at it. Mrs. Tryon's sallow cheek flushed, and she laughed a slight, embarrassed laugh. You're almost scared to see a book, aren't you? Well, I don't wonder. But the fact is, I have so little time, I thought I'd pin it open before me, and see if I couldn't fix them names while I was kneading bread. But it is getting all flour, and I declare if there ain't a spot of lard on it. I don't know, but I'll have to give it up. What are you reading? Winter asked cordially, the sight of the open book making him feel more at home with her than he ever had before. Well, I wasn't exactly reading. I was running over the names and events. You see, I was foolish enough to join a reading circle when I lived in the country. We only moved into town a year ago, and I kind of hated to give it up, though I've no time for reading now. But I keep sticking to the thing, thinking every day I won't. I missed the circle dreadfully, we had good times in it. Here was a reading circle where it would have been least suspected. Winter concluded there were more people at work in this world than he knew of. Do you enjoy books of that kind? he asked, glancing at the title of the one transfixed by the fork. Well, as to that, some of them I enjoyed and some I didn't. A good many of them seemed most dreadful dry to me, and do yet. I get so tired, you know, trotting around this house from morning till night waiting on people. I hate keeping borders anyway. I'd rather starve a little at a time each week than to live on the best of the land by keeping borders. But in spite of their dryness I get something from them. I hadn't many chances when I was young. That is why some things seem so dull to me, all new and strange, when they are nothing but ABC to people with educations. But the dull ones even, when you master them, give you a kind of pleasure. When I was coming here on the cars, I had something happen to me which explains what I mean. Four people sat together, had one seat turned you now, first class people, the class that isn't made of mustaches and frizzes, I mean the real thing. They were talking about a writer and Englishman, and arguing as to just when he wrote a certain book, and just what was happening about the same time. There was a difference of opinion, one thought one way and one another, and there was something of interest to themselves which turned on the decision, and none of them was right. I had been interested listening, and before I thought I spoke up and said, it was so and so. Halfway folks would have thought I was intruding, and would have curled up their lips at me, but these weren't that kind. They thanked me as pleasant as could be, and kind of took me into the talk. I found out they belonged to the same reading circle that I did. One of the gentlemen was a great scholar, a professor, and he explained two or three things that had puzzled me, and altogether I had a good time. I felt for a little while as though I was somebody who had a thought occasionally, besides what she could get for breakfast, and how she should manage the next quarter's rent. Yes, I like the books, even when they are dull. They get me out of myself. And are you reading all alone? Winter asked, as he watched the flowery mass being gradually reduced to order, and felt a deeper respect for the molder than he would have imagined possible a short time before. Oh no, there are three of us. You know Aunt Charlotte? She is reading with us. She reads aloud while I mend tableclothes and pillow slips. Some of the boarder's heads are very hard on pillow slips. I'm sure I don't know why. It can't be brains that wear them out. You don't mean Miss Fletcher? Why, she is very old. Yes, I do mean Miss Fletcher. She's my aunt on my mother's side. Yes, she is old, eighty-four last month. But she's as smart as a whip, and as good a reader as you need want to hear. She enters into the spirit of some things a great deal better than I can. She had a good education, Charlotte had, when she was young. Then there's my daughter, Maria. You haven't seen much of her. She's dreadful busy, and I don't have her go into the dining room much. She hates it, and I just as soon she wouldn't myself. Maria's young, but you'd laugh to see her do her reading. She's a fancy knitter. That is, she works at that evening's. She clerks it in Westlake's fancy store, and evenings she knits wristlets and baby's socks and sacks and all sorts of pretty things. She says she is going to knit her way through the reading circle. Sometimes to keep track of herself while Aunt Charlotte is reading, she has to keep up a kind of muttering like this. Knit one over, narrow, knit three, slip one, and all that sort of thing. But she hears the reading and remembers it better than any of us, and she doesn't think anything about it is dull. How I am running on to you. I beg your pardon, I'm sure. It isn't often I talk, especially with boarders. I'm very much obliged to you. Winter said heartily, I like to hear about it very much. I am interested in anything which has to do with books. And in his heart he thought that this world composed of the breadmaker and the eighty-four year old reader and the young knitter would be the one to which he would like to belong. Were there many members of the reading circle where you used to live? He asked, anxious to hear more of her talk. He must wait until her hands were out of the flower before she could do the doctor's bidding. Oh, I guess there were. It was just the life of the town. We had dreadful hard work getting it started. There was a Miss Perkins, a dressmaker, who got interested in it. She went from house to house sewing, and she told me that she cut and basted and fitted it into every dress she made for three months before she got the thing going. But it is live enough now. Fifty-four members who meet every week, and they do have the nicest times. You see, the place isn't very large, and the people are poor most of them. At least they aren't very rich, though if I had the money that some of them have, I should think I was. But they earn their living, and there are very few of what I call stuck-ups among them. A good many of us couldn't afford to own the books, so the circle bought them and lent them around, or we met in sections and appointed a reader, and listened and talked things over. Sometimes we had a regular party, refreshments, you know, nothing very grand but a little cake and coffee and a sandwich or two to make it seem social, and then we had an entertainment. Once it was author's evening. The first thing we knew, a lady would walk into the room, take a seat in the centre, and begin, I was born in London, or Scotland maybe, whatever the place was. Then she'd say, as a child I was noted for, well, whatever she had planned to say, and she would go on in that way until somebody would get an inkling of who she was, and ask, did your Christian name begin with a G? In that way the questions would go on until we got her guessed out. She would prove to be some eminent writer, and for the rest of the evening she would have to personate that character as well as she could. Then a gentleman would come in and say he was born a hundred years ago maybe. It was great fun, as well as real improving. Some of them we couldn't guess at all, but those we did guess, and for the matter of that those we couldn't, we never forgot afterward. One night my Maria was Harriet Beecher Stowe, and for all she is such a modern writer and people know so much about her, Maria succeeded in mystifying them so that it took twenty minutes to guess her out, and all her statements were correct, too. Did you ever hear anybody run on so in your life? I don't know what possesses me, but I am homesick for that reading circle, and that's a fact. Well, the spread is ready to leave, and now I'll tend to the doctor's orders right away. From the date of that conversation Winter found within himself a growing longing for society, the sort which, as Mrs. Tryon said, was real, and which had to do with reading circles. He came to the conclusion that these latter institutions were much more common than he had supposed. He wondered much whether one could not be found which would admit him within its charmed ring. According to Mrs. Tryon, they could not be exclusive. He even meditated asking admittance to that one of three members, the reader, the knitter, and the pillow-slip mender. But he reflected that that indeed might be embarrassingly exclusive. The three women might have good reason for objecting to the constant presence of one young man. So he abandoned this, and kept eyes and ears open, in search of something more in accord with his present condition. Occasionally he tried, with a curious smile on his face, to define his position. He ate no more of the leavings in Mrs. Josiah Griggs's kitchen, so much was certain. Neither was he served with wholesome and appetizing food at Miss Putnam's shining kitchen table. At Mrs. Tryon's he occupied a seat at the first table, and had a napkin of decent size, and a fork with some of the silver platings still left on it. By so much he had advanced. As for his Sundays, he still went to church with more or less regularity, but the habit of slipping a small book of some sort into his pocket for study while there had grown upon him to such a degree that he often found himself foraging in the doctor's library for one of suitable size. His position behind one of the pillars, in a seat which the doctor had rented for his students, furthered this habit, and many an abstruse treatise on disease had he mastered while the earnest preacher was struggling to gain his attention long enough to press the claims of the master of all diseases and all remedies. Naturally winter had grown to counting Sundays as partially wasted days, so much more could have been accomplished in the quiet office. He rejoiced when his turn came to sit at home and answer urgent calls. He rejoiced still more when the busy doctor occasionally called for his pony and his spring wagon, and himself to drive, while the carriage horses rested from an all-night toil. It is true that on these occasions he was obliged to keep very still, for often the only rest which the overworked physician had was during these spaces between visits. On the Sabbath day he made visits only where his presence was gravely important, but these were often quite enough to fill his morning. Occasionally he would rouse from his rests and give winter a vivid description of the case which was trembling in the balance. Whether to have it clearly before him or because he was interested in his young student winter could not be sure, but a careful analysis of the method of treatment would be gone over, and the student would feel at the close of such Sabbath days as though he had taken long strides in the direction of what he now boldly declared to himself was his chosen profession. The little pony, by the way, had become an institution in the doctor's stable, fitting in quite as well as its owner did in the office. The doctor's horses were always busy, and the doctor's children were delighted to have a trim, well-trained little pony and a neat spring wagon always subject to their call. I've been going to get them a pony as soon as I had time to select it, the doctor explained to Winter, and since a selected one has trotted to our door ready for service, why we'll rent him and its owner, for the present at least, so the pony and the pony's master were satisfied. Because of this arrangement, Winter was occasionally called to give service as driver for Miss Sate Decker and any friend who chanced to be her companion for the day. Miss Sate was sixteen and a hoidon in a graceful girlish way. You are not in the least like your Aunt Sarah, would the doctor say to her occasionally with a smile and a half sigh? She was as gentle as a summer morning and as sweet as a rosebud. You ought to have been named Susie three times over. A statement which those who remember Dr. Decker's younger sisters, Susie and Sate, will readily understand. Footnote, Little Fishers and Their Nets by Pansy and Footnote. It was on a certain October day that Winter and the pony were unexpectedly called into service to take Miss Sate and Miss Lou McClintic, her guest, to many ha ha falls, where a picnic was in progress. I don't belong, she explained to Miss Lou as they were driving over the lovely road. They are Nettie's friends, all of them. It is a wonderful reading circle, you must know, and I am not supposed to be old enough and wise enough to join them. But Nettie read with them for a year before she went east, and in honor of her and of the fact that she has sent them a class poem for this important occasion, I have been invited to join them and read it. I am glad enough to do so, for the falls are lovely, and they will be sure to have nice refreshments, and are pleasant people enough, though so literary that they bore me dreadfully sometimes. You girls are all named after your aunties, are you not? questioned Miss Lou irrelevantly. Every one of us, Papa repeated his own family in the vain hope that some of us would be like our namesakes, who are simply perfect in his eyes. But, dear me, we disappoint him dreadfully. Aunt Sate is an angel, besides being an artist, and very celebrated. Now you know what my prospects are for being angelic. And as for the artistic part, I can't draw even a crooked line right. Nettie may do better. She is a little like Aunt Nettie, I think. They chatted on throughout that long ride, utterly oblivious to the young fellow on the front seat who drove so carefully, avoiding all jolts, turning out skillfully for unruly branches over hanging the winding paths after they entered the wood road, and seeming quite absorbed in his pony. In point of fact, no word of theirs escaped winter calland. During all that long, bright day, whether driving or bringing pails of water or building fires or roasting corn, or doing any one of the hundred errands which seemed always waiting for him, he was at work studying these people who belonged to the world which he meant some day to enter. Several of the young men were younger than himself, yet they occupied an assured position in the place toward which he was climbing. He watched them, their ways and words and looks and laughter, how perfectly free and easy they were, unconscious of their hands or their feet, never in doubt where to sit or whether to sit or stand, never at a loss apparently for the thing to do and say next. They paid no sort of attention to winter. They were not rude, in fact they were kind. No one that day spoke other than pleasantly to him. It was, here, my good fellow, just run to the spring for another pail of water, will you? Or, Kelland, here's a job for you if you are at leisure. Or, where's Kelland? Oh, there you are, give us a lift with this ice, if you please. Kind, genial voices, pleasant thanks for skillful help, but not one of them said to him, Kelland, what do you think of that selection? Or, who wrote such a poem? Or, how did you like that article on English literature? In their world and not of it. Nothing was sureer. They were very unlike the young men whom he met daily at Mrs. Tryan's table. They were not supercilious. They did not, in the least, look down upon him. They simply forgot him entirely, save when they wanted his help. He took his solitary dinner which Mrs. Tryan had prepared and went to away from the merry groups and sat under a tree near the pony's side to eat it. And did not even know that during his absence Sarah Decker said, I wonder where winter is, Papa cautioned me to be sure that he had lunch. But two minutes afterward she had forgotten his existence. He came back and sat on the outer edge of the circle during its literary exercises. He heard the poem of the absent Nettie, read by her young sister, and within himself declared that he could have read that thing much better than she did. He studied the motto in Evergreen, which he had helped to hang over the temporary platform as soon as they arrived on the ground. We study the word and works of God. Why had they chosen it, he wondered. Were they really studying the Bible? Did they think themselves living up to its teachings? If so, did they not know that he possibly might have a soul worth saving? His lip curled a little over this motto. He did not understand how it applied. Like all observers who are only on the outside of things, he could not see the hidden life. He hovered about, doing little useful things after the more formal exercises were concluded and gleams of fun had begun to sparkle through the talk. Look what a current those tiny stones have made in the stream, said one, pointing to the swiftly rushing water. Who would suppose the little creatures could create such a force? I know it, laughed Sarah Decker, and, poising herself on one of the larger of the stones, she struck an attitude of mock oratory and declared, men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to greater things. Who said that? questioned Lou McKlintock. I don't remember. Winter did. He could have given the next line if he had chosen. He mused to himself as he gathered and carefully packed lemonade-glasses, wondering what they would have said if he had done so. Suppose he should burst forth with a strain from the same poem. So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be. The two lines seemed to voice for him a thought which at times filled his very soul, but he did not dare repeat them. The spirit of quotation took possession of the merry idlers, a young man who had gone out on the stepping stones to join Miss Decker, halted in the middle of the stream to say, pointing the while to the hurrying water, then heard I, more distinctly than before, the ocean breathe and its great breast expand, and hurrying came on the defenseless land the insurgent waters with tumultuous roar. As he gave the last line he sent his hat full of the hurrying water to the shore into the very arms of a lazy youth who half reclined on the grassy bank. After the merriment which this caused had subsided, the lazy youth put in his contribution. Oh, gift of God, oh, perfect day, whereon shall no man work but play, whereon it is enough for me not to be doing but to be. That's all very fine done, Lap, exclaimed a gentleman who was tugging with a huge basket. But you'll find there's more poetry than truth in it. You've got to get up this minute and help pack these things back into the carriages. It is really time we were thinking of home. A chorus of protests greeted him. Oh, not yet! It is early yet. Let us have some more quotations. Let us see who can tell where the next thing quoted is to be found. Before the words were finished the lazy youth had slightly changed his position and was dolefully sighing forth. All common things, each day's events, that with the hour begin and end, are pleasures and are discontents, are rounds by which we may ascend. That ought to reconcile you to helping a little you lazy dog, declared the one who had urged his assistants, while a half dozen voices cried out, Longfellow's ladder! Who can give another verse of it? questioned the class president, and, receiving no response from the others, the lazy gentleman murmured drowsily, We have not wings, we cannot soar. No! laughed one of the girls. But you would do well to remember that the next line is, We have feet to scale and climb. The lemonade-glasses were now all repacked, and winter was moving about gathering what baskets he could without noise. No word of the merriment or of the questions escaped him. Not one had been given as yet, but he could not have continued the recitation. He had not read many poems, but it seemed to him a curious coincidence that the quotations should be from those over which he had lingered with intense interest. There was a sense of repressed power about him, as he moved softly among the gay companies. If any of them had been interested enough to have given him a glance, they could almost have read the thoughts which were throbbing in his mind. If any of them had been near him, as he carried the heavily packed basket to the carriage, they would have seen him, after stowing it away, toss his hat on the ground, fold his arms, and give vent, in a strong voice full of passionate determination, to the lines which followed the verse last quoted. The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night. I'll get there, he said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Someday I'll stand on a point high enough to be equal with these at least. He laughed a little, then, half ashamed of the emotion, but he had never, since he left the little red school house, whether he used to walk with fine, felt so utterly lonely as he did that day. A friendly hand on his shoulder, a cordial voice claiming fellowship with him, would have almost led him whether it would, but no voice spoke. During the long homeward drive, while he was necessarily silent, and the young ladies in his charge were too weary to make their talk very interesting, his mind was busy with the problem of how he should get himself invited to join the ivy reading circle, that it was of the same general character as the one to which Mrs. Tryon had introduced him, had become evident from some of the talk he had heard, the same books were being read, and the same mottos were in use. Therefore, he argued, it could not be that they would have only those who belonged to their social world. I would not want to be invited to their parties, he told himself, with a mixture of humility and pride in the thought. I haven't clothes, nor manners, nor time for such nonsense. All I would want would be to meet with them while they were reading, and hear them talk books over, and get their ideas, and, well, to feel that I belonged somewhere. He studied the subject for several days, he way-laid Mrs. Tryon and asked more questions. Dear me, no, she said, it wasn't rich people chiefly. You might know that, or Maria and I wouldn't have belonged. Though, for the matter of that, we went with the best when we went at all. Our circumstances were different when Mr. Tryon was living. But, real poor, what some might call low-down people belonged to our circle. Some of them worked in the factory. One of the smartest girls in the circle had to work day and night almost in a stocking mill to keep soul and body together. Her mother worked at home finishing off stockings. I remember once she told me when the class magazine came from the office, all nice and fresh, she held it before her mother. And the mother, looking up from her stocking basket with a queer kind of a smile, said, Get thee behind me, Satan! She felt, you know, that she hadn't time to read it, and it looked just like a temptation to her. Poor thing! She's gone since that, where they don't have to hurry through the days to get ready for the nights. No, we've never tried to belong to one here. We wouldn't have time to go out to it. We have to do our reading in odd minutes. And then Maria didn't want to. She doesn't know the young people here, and she thinks they are different from her. Sometimes I'm sorry that she doesn't push right in and try to be one of them. She could hold her own so far as brains went. But it is a question of clothes, and that is a thing I suppose young men don't understand very well. They don't have to twist and turn and plan about clothes as girls do. It's a mercy they don't. That subject will wear the young women of this generation all out, I'm afraid. People wonder why there's so much nervous prostration nowadays. It is a wonder to me that there are any nerves left to be prostrated. When you get to be a doctor, I hope you will see if there is any cure for a disease which makes folks with fifty cents a week want to look exactly like those who have fifty dollars a day. That isn't quite it, either. Have to look something like them, or else feel queer and strange, as though they didn't belong to the same world. No, that question didn't come up in the circle we belonged to because the people all dressed very plainly. I never thought much about it until I came here, but I see now that the rich ones there dressed as simply as the poor, and no one seemed to think of dress anyway.