exciting to find that they are only bulges in the middle of a root. Then where do you suppose they get their pale pink color from, hidden away from the sun and air all this time? And oh, Osceola, look at this one! A regular monster, as big and pinky as a puppy dog! There is as much adventure about this as hunting for Captain Kidd's gold-for you never know whether a hill is going to have two or twenty in it."

"Tis the place and all around it as of old the curlews call,"

prompted Osceola, taking advantage of the first lull.

"Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall,"

sighingly contributed her fellow-scholar, extremely loath to exchange yams for Lord Alfred.

Prodded onward by potatoes and poetry, the hot morning traveled to hotter noon, bringing the workers to a state of limp exhaustion and inducing them to accept with relief Mrs. Carter's suggestion that they "knock off till four."

Surveying the result she told them they had "did real famous," and truly the compliment was not undeserved, for the heap of unearthed tubers was considerable. Tallahassie, after her fishing orgy, had ridden many of the yams in the wheelbarrow to the edge of the lake and had treated them to a bath, bringing them back pinker than ever and in possession of an increased market value.

"Say, whilst you two been gibberin' 'bout the 'grand results o' time' I done it," shrilled the tousled-haired little child, caressing one of her bare heels and beaming

proudly at her bathed potatoes. "Doesn't they look most good enough to chaw inter raw ?”

"They do indeed," answered Laurie, who was too deep in a new perplexity to be more voluble in her praise. "How in the world are we ever going to get these things down to the boat landing at Perseverance City? I am afraid the cartage is going to cost us a soul-harrowing penny." For nobody had a horse.

"Now stop a-worriting over your death till you're dead," advised Mrs. Carter, "then you'll find some❜uns else 'll do it for you. Le's go home, chilluns, an' l'arn what pap's did to the baby."

"Yes, it will do us all good to rest and dress," counseled Laurie, glancing discreetly at the older woman's still drenched skirts.

"No use rollin' you' pretty eyes at me, honey," said that cheerful, toothless one. "I ain't got no other clo'es to my back, nor to my front either, far's that goes. When I were young an' fussed-up folks named me a crackerjack for looks; now I'm only cracker."

"You are still young." Laurie launched herself into the opening eagerly. "Fuss up again and see if you aren't!"

"Laws, honey, haow, when I ain't got no clo❜es? What with the baby, an' the cooking, an' Lee to nussthe poor boy-and that all, seems I cain't ever git no time to sew. Well, I'm off! Lee's gone this luttle time, an' Tall'hass', an' yonder goes Osceoly; so now me -Brown's cows agin."

Deserted by her cohorts the mistress of McAllister's grove sauntered to her pine bungalow, experiencing in an ever-renewed stream her initial enjoyment of owning "grounds." Twenty acres is much or little according to where you have come from in order to take posses

sion of them. If you have come from a New York flat you can open your arms to twenty acres with the Monte Cristo greeting, "The world is mine!"

The bungalow, sprawling contentedly in the shade of its trees, commanded several views which did not wholly do outrage to the term "vistas." Having a selfrespecting contempt for a Florida road it turned its back to it, preferring to face the sparkle and freshness of the lake which in the morning reflected the brightness of a thousand suns and in the evening stretched away in placid dusky pools, broken only by the riffes made by minnows when they jumped. Though the road view had its good points too, being glimpsed through a double avenue of oleander and magnolia trees, ending in a gate of a summerhouse variety inasmuch as it was roofed and owned two rustic benches; in a land where handsome posts can be had for the chopping, architectural effects can be had for the wishing. To the right were the woods of long-leaf pine, where the cones fell like rain and the banners of moss streamed in the wind, and where the quail walked without fear, calling clearly to each other at dawn, especially when a shower was coming.

Encircling all these riches ran Roycroft's outlying lands, his vast pasture fields and young nurseries where thousands of budded stock and seedlings were springing up in a thick grass which had been left rank in order to furnish certain properties of humus for the soil, also to protect the infant trees from cold. These outlying fields were so far from his grove proper that he himself was rarely seen in them. Peter did the work.

And here was Peter now approaching with a few ripe papayas in his hands. A papaya-for those who

are ignorant and would like a really scientific description of it-is a fruit which tastes like a forty-second cousin of a cantaloupe, and profusely hugs the central stem of a plant resembling a hollyhock gone mad. But put pepper and salt on the papaya and eat it from the inside out with a spoon, and you forget its botanical oddities.

"Pawdon," remarked Peter, with an admirable copy of his cool young master, "you-all speculate yo' kin use dese?"

"I certainly can! Thank you!"

"Yurelkum."

"Are they yours, Peter, or Mr. Roycroft's?"

"Dey ain't jais what yo' might call mine, Miss Laurie."

"Then maybe you ought not to give them to me, Peter."

"Deed so, Miss Laurie! A whiles back I say, 'Mr. Rake-off, I'se gwoin' see wat Miss Laurie thinks o' dese 'payas,' an' I tek particular notice he ain't say I ain't."

"We-ell, thank you again, Peter."

"Yurelkum, but me an' Mr. Charles Colin Rake-off don' require no thanks f'm no lady, miss."

"Colin?" she caught up the new name interestedly, finding it less stiff than the old; "less of a mouthful" is the way she phrased it to herself. "I did not know that his middle.name was Colin."

"Dat's jais a few of his name," replied Peter, rubbing his wool to disguise a pride so great that it threatened to enthuse him. "Over in Yurrup he got a name as long as my whup-lash, an' lef' mos' of it dere, fotchin' on'y wat he reeley need to Floridy."

"I am glad he brought Colin, Peter; it is a very nice

name," she answered, continuing on her way to the house.

But he politely detained her yet another moment. "Miss Laurie, is you' chickens de ones wid de rugged brown foliage p'inting ever whichaway for Sunday?" "Yes, Peter, that describes them very well."

"Den I bring you in one f'm de field. She done stole she nest, an' got a fam❜ly all hotched out fo' you.” "She can't have much of one," argued the girl, "for I haven't had chickens but five weeks, if that."

"Quantity don' make fam❜ly; it's de style dey has. She's two. I'll brung 'em over to you-all's barn." "Thank you," she replied, angling for the reply. It came. "Yurelkum."

Laughing, she ran into the house to find her grandfather with watch in hand and a papal look on his old face which seemed to suggest that he lived on the food of the spirit alone-sign that he was famished for a substantial meal.

"There has been a most extraordinary female here all morning, my darling," he announced, following the flying young mistress to the kitchen.

"That was Mrs. Carter, grandpa, and look at what she has done!"

Neatly arranged on the windowsill were glasses of warm guava syrup, hardening imperceptibly to jelly.

"It is a very good color," granted the old gentleman, autocratically. "But the female-pardon me, my dear, I should say your friend, Mrs. Carter-persisted in conversing with me, though I had never met her, and she mumbled through gums so astonishingly toothless that I failed to understand the half of what she said; whereupon she asked me if I were deaf, but called it