the boat landing to the bungalow had they passed a house.

"Aren't there any neighbors?" she asked, clasping her hands nervously.

Very pretty hands they were, slim and white and kissable. From his front seat Hopkins stared down at them, first with admiration, then with respect, then with commiseration. He shoved back a purely imaginary hat and scratched his head hard, trying to dig out a helpful answer.

"See here, honey," he began, using the caressing epithet so kindly that it was no insult. "Florida folks live far off, but never too far to come when they's needed. Remember that. And there's a house only two miles up the road. You can't see it unless their chimney smokes. And there's one across the lake. Look -a point of the red roof shows. Come, that's only half a mile away!"

"By water," qualified the young girl, still gripping her hands together. She looked across the lake, taking but little comfort in the point of red roof, for she had no boat. "How near is it by the road, Mr. Hopkins?"

Like a cactus, a real estate man has hundreds of unsuspected good points, and Hopkins really suffered at being obliged to reply:

"A goodish three miles, honey. Oh, dim, dem, dom, dum, dam!"

After giving way to this chain of epithets which seemed to show that the old blight was back upon his mind, he viciously twisted the tail of his gazelle, so to speak, and by it was soon borne leaping down the lane.

Standing alone in her new land she watched him till he entirely disappeared from sight. With the taking away of the constant rattle of his voice, which plainly

had been kept working to cover up some defects in the situation, silence seemed to settle down over the entire world like a big brooding bird. There was nothing left but solitude, not the humming solitude of cities, which is but another name for too much company, but the awful solitariness of Wordsworth's star, "When only one is shining in the sky."

Yet the almost tangible stillness had a warmth and vitality that was as potent as a dream-drug to set Laurie's fancies afloat. They wanted to wander from leaf to leaf like the gorgeous butterflies all around her.

But instead of being able to play princess in her enchanted garden she was obliged to enact Cinderella among the mislaid pots and pans of a chaotic new kitchen, and get supper ready. Her grandfather had given the warning sign by pottering out upon the porch and ostentatiously consulting his watch. The McAllister considered it beneath man's dignity ever to mention meals or to admit feeling healthily hungry; he also considered it an indelible blot upon a woman's soul if she did not have food on the table at the exact moment when that unmentionable feeling came to him. By examining his watch in advance and in plain sight, he felt that he was attending to the salvation of both of them.

"Grandpa, the flowers would have cost five dollars in New York!" she exclaimed later, when setting him down to a frugal meal whose chief magnificence was the floral centerpiece-snipped at random from one of the many blossoming vines on the porch. "To be able to dash out of five front doors and immediately lay your hands upon a bouquet is a thrilling experience for a Harlem-ite!"

"Yes, my darling," responded The McAllister with

his habitual courtesy and affection, but his eyes were fastened upon the nondescript-looking dish of "white bacon." His thoughts were fastened on that barren spot, too. The fact that the spot was flanked by a plate of crackers did not materially enhance its attractiveness.

From her seat opposite Laurie leaned forward and put her fragrant young hand gratefully upon his.

"You are a brick!" she said. Her lips were tremulous, and her eyes were smiling through a mist. "It's a beastly supper, and you are noble not to explode. I promise you better things in the future. I faithfully promise. Just think of the good things I can buy for you when the crop is sold and the money comes rolling in!"

"I have nothing to say against the supper, my dear,” he observed. "And I see marmalade and oatmeal cookies which had escaped my notice. But permit me to protest most earnestly against 'brick,' 'beastly,' and 'explode.' Whatever else you may do of a questionable nature, Annie Laurie, do not, I entreat you, do not become American."

"How can I become' what I have already come to be, grandpa?" she asked hardily, then had the tact to shove the diversion of marmalade into the belligerent

zone.

She had the satisfaction of seeing the old man eat a very good meal. After it, when he was sitting out on the porch, ostensibly to smoke, he dropped off into peaceful sleep. Yet insomnia had been one of his troubles in the cold north!

"Oh, I am sure everything is going to turn out all right," whispered Laurie to herself, as she surreptitiously covered his knees with a blanket.

Asleep, he was easier to care for than awake. Everything that was necessary for him had to be done by stealth. In his conscious hours he refused to be "coddled," claiming sternly that he "never caught cold.” "Dust in the throat," he explained when he coughed. "Smoke in the nose," he remarked when he sneezed.

"If very old gentlemen could be sat in a corner when needing it, or be put to bed like naughty little children, I'm sure they'd be the better for it," murmured Laurie, balancing the disrespect of the remark by dropping a soft kiss upon his white hair before leaving.

The responsibility of being mother, child, nurse, doctor, housekeeper, and wage earner weighed so heavily upon her that she fairly dared not think of it.

"Things have got to turn out all right," she concluded, flinging trouble from her for the time. Youth's happy knack of feeling that what ought to be must be!

Across the grove, and garden, and lake, the sun was still shining, so the girl went on a little tour of investigation. She stood under an orange tree, tried to count the oranges, and gloatingly failed-they were too many for her. Next she wandered around the neglected garden hunting for and finding all sorts of plant treasures among the weeds.

Then came the magical moment of afternoon when the genius of Florida waves his wand and transforms his hitherto dull world into a Paradise of color and perfume.

Laurie gazed around her, entranced. Was this the country she had called flat, uninteresting, lonely? The whole place was suddenly astir; squirrels frisked from branch to branch of the laden pecan trees; flaming cardinal birds, sprites of fire and song, darted like jewels from one citrus covert to another; and the mocking

birds, less shy, took companionable-not to say inquisitive-possession of each stump and post, occasionally exchanging choice short sentences in a liquid gurgle that was friendliness itself. The balsamic spice of pines made every breath an elixir of life, and across the whole width of the western sky were sunset reds of such lithographic impudence that one had to rub one's eyes open in order to make sure that the conflagration was in the sky alone, and not on the earth beneath.

The long lake reflected the blaze so exactly that but for the picturesque pines on its shore there was no telling where the heavens ended and the waters began.

"Don't ever dare say 'Italy' to me again!" murmured Laurie, addressing geography books in general, as she sauntered down to the lake to get as near as possible to the grandeur.

She now found that she owned a boat dock, even if no boat-a winding, wooden, wobbling centipede of a thing, with a hundred legs taking it out into the water, some of the legs missing and all of them rotting.

Before she reached this venerable ruin she made a second discovery. This one affected her as the sight of a sail might affect a castaway on a raft.

A man had just put out in a canoe from the opposite shore, and was now paddling towards her with the sweeping sure stroke of an Indian.