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"Is Mr. Thorne here?" asked Bob.

"Why, no," replied the girl; "but I'm Mr. Thorne's sister. Won't I do?"

She was leisurely laying aside her hoe, and drawing the fringed buckskin gauntlets from her hands. Bob stepped gallantly forward to relieve her of the implement.

"Do?" he echoed. "Why, of course you'll do!"

She stopped and looked him full in the face, with an air of great amusement.

"Did you come to see Mr. Thorne on business?" she asked. "No," replied Bob; "just ran over to see him."

She laughed quietly.

"Then I'm afraid I won't do," she said, "for I must cook dinner. You see," she explained, "I'm Mr. Thorne's clerk, and if it were business, I might attend to it."

Bob flushed to the ears. He was ordinarily a young man of sufficient self-possession, but this young woman's directness was disconcerting. She surveyed his embarrassment with approving eyes.

"You might finish those beans," said she, offering the hoe. "Of course, you must stay to dinner, and I must go light the fire."

Bob finished the beans, leaned the hoe up against the house, and went around to the front. There he stopped in astonishment.

"Well, you have changed things!" he cried.

The stuffy little shed kitchen was no longer occupied. A floor had been laid between the bases of four huge trees, and walls enclosing three sides to the height of about eight feet had been erected. The affair had no roof. Inside these three walls were the stove, the kitchen table, the shelves and utensils of cooking. Miss Thorne, her sunbonnet laid aside from her glossy black braids, moved swiftly and easily here and there in this charming stage-set of a kitchen. About ten feet in front of it, on the pine needles, stood the dining table, set with white.

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"I beg pardon," said he. The girl turned

The girl nodded brightly to Bob.

"Finished?" she inquired. She pointed to the water pail: "There's a useful task for willing hands."

Bob filled the pail, and set it brimming on the section of cedar log which seemed to be its appointed resting place. "Thank you," said the girl. Bob leaned against the tree and watched her as she moved here and there about the varied business of cooking. Every few minutes she would stop and look upward through the cool shadows of the trees, like a bird drinking. At times she burst into snatches of song, so brief as to be unrecognizable.

"Do you like sticks in your food?" she asked Bob, as though suddenly remembering his presence, "and pine needles, and the husks of pine nuts, and other débris? because that's what the breezes and treeses and naughty little squirrels are always raining down on me.

"Why don't you have the men stretch you a canvas?" asked Bob.

"Well," said the girl, stopping short, "I have considered it. I no more than you like unexpected twigs in my dough. But you see I do like shadows and sunlight and upper air and breezes in my food. And you can't have one without the other. Did you get all the weeds out?"

"Yes," said Bob. "Look here; you ought not to have to do such work as that."

"Do you think it will wear down my fragile strength?" she asked, looking at him good-humouredly. "Is it too much exercise for me?"

"No" hesitated Bob, "but

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"Why, bless you, I like to help the babies to grow big and green," said she. "One can't have the theatre or bridge up here; do leave us some of the simple pleasures."

"Why did you want me to finish for you then?" demanded Bob shrewdly.

She laughed.

"Young man," said she, "I could give you at least ten

reasons," with which enigmatic remark she whipped her apron around her hand and whisked open the oven door, where were displayed rows of beautifully browned biscuits. "Nevertheless "began Bob.

"Nevertheless," she took him up, raising her face, slightly flushed by the heat, "all the men-folks are busy, and this one woman-folk is not harmed a bit by playing at being a farmer lassie."

"One of the rangers could do it all in a couple of hours." "The rangers are in the employ of the United States Government, and this garden is mine," she stated evenly. "How could I take a Government employee to work on my property?"

"But surely Mr. Thorne

"Ashley, bless his dear old heart, takes beans for granted, as something that happens on well-regulated tables.'

She walked to the edge of the kitchen floor and looked up through the trees. "He ought to be along soon now. I hope so; my biscuits are just on the brown." She turned to Bob, her eyes dancing: "Now comes the exciting moment of the day, the great gamble! Will he come alone, or will he bring a half-dozen with him? I am always ready for the half-dozen, and as a consequence we live in a grand, ingenious debauch of warmed-ups and next-days. You don't know what good practice it is; nor what fun! I've often thought I could teach those cooks of Marc Antony's something you remember, don't you, they used to keep six dinners going all at different stages of preparation because they never knew at what hour His High-and-mightiness might choose to dine. Or perhaps you don't know? Football men don't have to study, do they?"

"What makes you think I'm a football man?" grinned Bob; "generally bovine expression?"

"Not know the great Bob Orde!" cried the girl. "Why, not one of us but had your picture, generally in a nice gilt shrine, but always with violets before it."

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