Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 225, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1916 — Thr IDYL of TWIN FIRES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Thr IDYL of TWIN FIRES

By WALTER PRICHARD EATON

SYNOPSIS. 1 crow tired of xny work as a collese instructor and buy a New England farm on sight I inspect my farm and go to board at Bert Temple’s. Bert helps me to hire a carpenter and a farmer. Hard Cider, the carpenter, estimates the repairs and changes necessary on the house. Mike commences plowing. I start to prune the orchard tree. Hard Cider builds bookcases around the twin fireplaces. Mrs. Temple hires Mrs. Pillig for me as a housekeeper, and announces the coming of a new boarder from New York, a halfsick young woman who needs the country air I discover that Stella Goodwin will make a delightful companion and believe shs ought not to return to the hot and dusty city for a long time. I squeeze her hand slyly. Together we dedicate “Twin Fires.”

Is there a better time to make love than the last day of Mayor a better place than a romantic old country home where there’s a murmuring brook, a lovely quiet pine grove, a rose garden and myriad song birds?

CHAPTER IX. Acteon and Diana. Memorial day dawned fair and warm. Bert and his wife and all their “help” went off to the village after breakfast. There were no painters in my house, and Mike had milked the cows and gone home before I arrived. Miss Goodwin and I seemed to have that little section of Bentford quite to ourselves, after the last of the carryalls had rattled past, taking the veterans from Slab City to the town. Having no flag yet of my own, I borrowed one from Bert, and we hung it from a second-story window, facing the road, as our tiny contribution to the sentiment of the day. Then we tackled the rose trellis, speedily completing it. for only two arches remained to be built, one of the carpenters having built three for me the day before, while waiting for some shingle9*To come for the barn. Indeed, we had it done by ten o’clock. “Now what?” said she. I looked about the garden. The roses had not yet come, so we couldn’t very well plant them. I judged that the morning of a warm, sunny day was no time to transplant seedlings. The painting was not yet completed inside, so I could fix up no more of my rooms. The vegetable garden didn’t appear to need cultivation. We couldn’t paint the trellis, as there was no green paint. “Good gracious!” I exclaimed, “this is the'first time I’ve been at a loss for something to do. It's a terrible sensation.” ■- “Couldn’t we build a bird bath?” she suggested. “Madam,” said I, “you are a genius!” “At the brook?” she added. “No, not the brook. I’ve a better idea,” said I. “My plan is to put the bird bath on the east edge of the lawn, halfway between the house and the rose aqueduct, corresponding to the sundial in the center, and to a white bench which will be placed at the west side when the grape arbor is built.” .. “Approved,” laughed Miss Goodwin, measured off the spot, an<j I mixed a lot of cement, laid it thick, set the bottomless box frame down upon it, and built up the four sides. As the girl had no gloves, I would not allow her to handle the cement (for nothing cracks the skin so badly, as I had discovered in my orchard work). But she kept busy mixing with the hoe, and handing me. bricks. Some I broke and put in endwise. and I was careful to all as irregular a setting as possible, till the top was reached. Then, of course, I laid an even line of the best bricks all the way around, and leveled them carefully. We had scarcely got the last brick on when we heard Bert’9"carryall rattle over the bridge and Bert’s voice yelling “Dinner!” -—-"Oh7 (lehf! That cement in the box will harden!" I cried. “Dump it all in.” Then, mixing more cement I laid a square bowl, as it were, two Inches deep, on the top of the little brick pile. We let it settle a few moments, and then carefully broke away the box. There stood the bird bath. “Can we put water in it yet?” the girl asked. “Surely,” said “Cement will hard- ■ en under water. And we’ll plant climbing nasturtiums around it, too." We passed through the house. The kitchen, dining foom. and hall were finished and the paint drying. TheW looked very fresh and bright. The south room, as we/Stepped into it was flooded with sunlifhi and cheerful with rugs and books. Flinging wide the glass door, we stepped out upon the terrace of the pergola-to-be, and lookedtoward the new bird bath. Upon its rim sat a song sparrow! Even as we watched, another came and fluttered his feet and breast daintily through the trembling little mirror of water.

Then came a robin and drove them both away. “The pig!” laughed Miss Goodwin. “Do you know, I’ve got a poorer opinion of robins since I came here. We city dwellers think of robins as harbingers of spring, and all that, and they epitomize the bird world. But when you really are in that world, you find they are rather large and vulgar and — and sort of upper West slde-y. They aren’t half so nice as the song sparrows, or the Peabodies, and, of course, compared with the thrushes —well, it’s like comparing Owen Meredith with Keats, isn’t it?” “Don’t be too hard on the robins,” I smiled. We looked our fill at the new bird bath, which was already functioning, as she said her boss on the dictionary would put it, and <at the white sundial pillar, and at our prospective aqueduct of roses, and at the farm and the far hills beyond—and then she suddenly announced with great energy that she was going to saw wood. “You may saw just one piece,” said I, “and then you are going to take a book and rest. I’m going to work, myself. Twin Fires is getting in shape fast enough now so I can give up part of the daytime to the purely mundane task of paying the bills.” I wheeled up a big dead apple branch from the orchard to the wood shed, put

it on the buck, gave her the buck saw, and watched her first efforts, grinning. “Go away,” she laughed. “You bother me.” So I went, opened the west window by my desk toShe wandering summer breeze, and went at my toil. Presently I heard her tiptoeing into the room. “Done?” said I. She nodded. ‘'Now I want—let’s see _what I want—well, I guess ‘Mariks the Epicurean’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ will do. I’m going to sit in the orchard. You work here till five or your salary will be docked. Good-by.” I heard her go out by the front door, and then silence settled over tlie sunfilled, cheerful room, while I plugged away at my tasks. I don’t know how long I worked, but finally my attention began to wander. I wondered if she were still in the orchard. I looked out upon the sweet stretches of my farm, with the golden light of afternoon upon it, and work became a burden. “Shall I ever be able to work, except at night, or on rainy days!” I wondered with a smile, as I tossed the manuscript I was reaxling into a drawer, and went out through the front entrance. The girl was nowhere to be seen. “She’s probably in her beloved pines,” I reflected. “It would be a good time to clean out a path in the pines.” I turned back to get a hatchet, and then went down toward the brook. I trod as noiselessly as I could through the maples, thinking to surprise her at her reading, and took care in the pines not to step on any dead twigs. She was nowhere to be seen near the upper end of the grove, but as I advanced I heard a splashing louder than the soft ripple of the brook, and suddenly around a thick tree at a in the stream, where the brook ran out toward the tamarack swamp in the corner of my farm, I came upon her She had her shoes and stockings off. and with her skirts held high she was wading with solemn, quiet delight in a little pool. Her back was toward me. I could have discreetly retreated, and she been none the wiser. But, alas! Acteon was neither the first nor the last of his sex. The water rippled so

coolly around her white ankles! The sunlight dappled down so charmingly upon her chestnut hair! And I said, with a laugh, “So that is why you wanted me to work until five o’clock!” She turned with a little exclamation, the color flaming to her cheeks. Then she, too, laughed, as she stood in the brook, holding her skirts above the water. “Consider yourself turned to a stag,” she said. “All right,” I answered, “but don’t stay in that cold water too long.” “If I do it will be your fault,” she smiled, with a sidelong glance. Then she turned and began wading tentatively downstream. But the brook deepened suddenly, and she sank almost to her knees, catching her skirts up just in time. I withdrew hastily, and called back to her to come out. When I heard her on the bank, I brought her a big handkerchief for a towel, and withdrew once more, telling her to hurry and help me plan the path through the pines. In a moment or two she was by my side. We looked at each other. Her face was still but her eyes .were merry. We were standing on almost the exact spot where we had first met. But now there seemed in some subtle wise a new bond of intimacy between us, a bond that had not existed before this hour. I could not analyze it, but I felt it, and I knew she felt it. But what she said was: “I told you to work till five o’clock.” “It’s half-past four,” I answered. “Besides, you must have sent for me. Something suddenly prompted me to come out and hunt you up, at any rate.” “To say 1 sent for you is rather rather forward, under the circumstances, don’t you think?” “It might be —and it might not be,” I answered. “Did you have a good time?” “The best I ever had—till you spoiled It,” she exclaimed. “Oh, the nice, cold brook! Now, let’s build the path you. spoke about once.” We went back to the maples, where the ground was open, and selected a spot on the edge of the pines where the path would most naturally enter. Then we let it wind along by the brook. When we reached the hayfleld wall beside the house it was nearly six o’clock. “Now, let’s just walk back through it!” she cried. “Tomorrow we can bring the wheelbarrow, can’t we, and pick up the litter we’ve made?” “I can, at any rate, while you wade.” said I. She shot a little look up into my face. “I guess I’ll help,” she smiled. In the low afternoon light we turned about and retraced our steps. There was but a fringe of pines along the southern wall, and as they were forty-year-old trees here the view both back to the house and over the wall into the next pasture was airy and open. Then the path led through a corner of the tamarack swamp wherein wet weather I should have to put down some planks, and- where the cattails grew breast high on either side. Then it entered the thick pine grove where a great many of the trees were evidently not more than fifteen or twenty years old and grew very close. The sunlight was shut out, save for daggers of blue between the trunks toward the west. The air seemed hushed, as if twilight were already brooding here. The little brook rippled softly. , As we came to the first crossing, I pointed to the pool, already dark with shadow, and said, “It was wrong of me to play Acteon to your Diana, but I am not ashamed nor sorry. You were very charming in the dappled light, and you were doing a natural thing, and in among these little pines, perhaps, two friends may be two friends, though they are man and woman.” She did not reply at once, but stood beside me looking at the dark pool and apparently listening to the whisper of the running water against the steppingstones, Finally she said with a little laugh, “I have always thought that perhaps Diana was unduly severe. Come, we must be moving on.” I Once more we entered the plneA fol-’ lowing the new path over the brook again to the spot where we first had met. There I touched her hand. “Let us Wait for the thrush here,” I whispered. I could sets ber glimmering face -lifted to mine. “Why here?” she asked. “Because It was here we first heard him.”

If ho proposed marriage to Stella at this point, do you think she would accept him—or does a girl like to be pursued a little while longer when she feels she has her man ensnared?

(TO BE

“That’s Why You Wanted Me to Work Until Five o’clock!”