"You make your jokes potential? That's sensible. Talking of jokes, Mr. Hopkins told me a good one." "Ye-es ?" "Ye-es.

Said there was someone who was willing to buy my place. That shows there's another humorist in the world besides myself."

"It might be your best move to sell if you can." "When I sell I promise you you will be the first one to be told," she answered dryly.

"You are going to stay and fight it out?" he asked, with a show of genuine eagerness.

"Didn't I tell you I would?"

"That was before you knew how hard it would be." "Yes, it is hard. These are laboring, snaky days. I'd almost forgotten that snake. Up north I'd have talked it for seven years."

His breath came quickly again at her mention of the gruesome incident that had brought him speeding from the woods.

"I must not detain you longer, Miss Laurie, but before I go may I shake hands with you for the grittiest girl I ever met?"

Now that word "grittiest" was unfortunately chosen, reminding her that her once well-kept little hands were now gritty indeed, grimed to the bone by the sands of the yam patch. They would have lain like small coals in his outstretched white palm.

"It isn't necessary," she answered, whipping the discreditable members behind her back, holding her head high because of remembering the probable fact that the lovely girl in his watch had lily fingers.

"You are offended too readily," he said with coldness and pride.

Then he walked off.

CHAPTER XII

FFENDED!" whispered Miss McAllister, happily offering the word to the scenery for what

it was worth. “I am glad he thinks that I am offended rather than to think I am- or thinks that I feel-oh, I don't know what I am talking about. But how glorious the day is! And how fine and fearless the lake looks! Some day I'm going to borrow Lohengrin's swan and go out for a little paddle by myself, and maybe get near enough to the other side to catch a glimpse of his house and grove. I wager they are kept up to the nines, the way he keeps himself. I am rather pleased to know that he thinks I am brave, for I have sensible doubts about it. He seemed nicer today than ever before. Thank you, snake."

Wrapped in the causeless, indescribable elation which Roycroft had power to wrap around her like a magic cloak, she meandered dreamily back to her former field of labor.

Lee and Tallahassie had gone. They never took particular pleasure in the undiluted society of their older sister, being too certain of hearing from her in regard to their obvious shortcomings. Osceola was alone, and was rapidly emptying the few remaining hills. In spite of the grime and heat she had kept her pink muslin dress unspotted and uncrushed, and she had kept her wild-rose face unstreaked. She graced the lowly furrow like a fresh flower blown from a bush.

In self-centered anxiety to continue to improve she greeted her yam partner with the next line of the "Elegy."

"Large was his bounty and his soul sincere."

This happened to accord so tunefully with the general tenor of that partner's musings as to induce her to respond,

"I think so, too." After placing this sentiment on record, Laurie sat herself down to the grubbing. Under her mushroom-shaped man's hat Osceola looked scandalized.

"That's not your line," she scolded. "Oh!" Laurie reluctantly waked.

"Heaven did a recompense as largely send,"

she murmured apologetically, then dreamed again.

"He gave to misery all he had a tear,"

continued Osceola, frowning.

Again Laurie came to the surface with a start.

"And gained from heaven-'twas all he asked—a friend."

Then she rebelled and said coaxingly, "Oh, Eola, lassie, life itself is such a lovely poem! Let's shut the books a while and listen to it."

"It may be well enough for you to talk that-a-way -that way-but how about those whose life is not a poem, Laurie? From books come my whole happiness. For the sake of being able to buy books I have worked in this ground, though I hate the sun, hate work that

makes my hands dirty. Books keep me from running away and doing something desperate. What else have I to live for but for the comfort I can glean from a page 'rich with the spoils of time'-as this poem says?"

"Osceola, you are too sensible to talk such nonsense. The idea of a girl with a mother, a father, a brother, and two sisters hinting that she has nothing to live for but books!" Laurie's orphan-heart throbbed protestingly.

"But it's true," persisted Osceola, taking a certain gloomy joy in thus being able to prove herself different from the ordinary run of girls. "What pleasure are my people to me? None. So I turn to books. Books keep me from thinking of my unbearable home."

"Osceola, I won't stand another word like that," warned Laurie, filled with a resolve that was not the sudden caprice of the moment, but had been growing through many days, feeding itself upon first this incident, then that, being born perhaps of the thrill of pity she had felt for Mrs. Carter at the time that that indomitable cheerful one had said, "You-all save the tin cans an' I'll make the view."

"Why are you looking at me as if you was angrywere angry with me? Me!" said the cracker girl shortly.

"Because I am. Yes, open your big eyes; and maybe you'll never look at me in kindness again, for I'm going to tell you what I think of you."

"You told me you liked me," reminded Osceola, almost warningly.

"I more than like you; I love you. I can't help it; you are so pretty, and you try so faithfully to make the best of yourself. I believe in that, but I believe in making the best of other people, too. But you evi

dently don't. So there I think you are selfish and

cruel."

In much mental commotion, Laurie dropped the last yam on its heap, and then locked her trembling hands in her lap, shaken by proper doubts as to the advisability of ever speaking naked truth to a fellow creature. Now, however, there was nothing to do but to continue. A truth that is half stripped is much more offensive than one which is nobly nude.

"Selfish? Cruel?" The Florida girl recoiled from these accusations with indignation and distrust.

"Awfully so. What you need is not to be kept from thinking of your home, but made to think of it more. Almost everything that is wrong about your home life —and I admit there's plenty-is your own fault."

"Have you gone crazy?" hinted Osceola.

"No, I've come sane, and dare speak out. Your people did not educate you to be a burden and a faultfinder, but to help to lift them. And have you tried? Have you tried to share the knowledge? You know you haven't. Does little Tallahassie want to be untidy and ignorant? Every word she says is proof to the contrary. If I were blessed with a little sister I'd teach her and wash her and darn her some stockings! The stockings are more necessary for health's sake than for looks' sake. You know that.”

"Are you trying to daring to"

Tallahassie's sister found herself unable to put the accusation in words, bound to secrecy by the inherited narrowness of a set of people who think that family pride is best preserved by refusing to admit the presence of a discreditable ailment in their midst instead of seeking the publicity of a cure.

But the arraigner went on undaunted.