expression was passing away from her blue eyes. Every day it seemed easier
for her to laugh, and her step grew more elastic. It was all so gradual that
he never questioned it, but his eyes followed her with increasing pleasure and
he listened, when she spoke, with deepening interest. Sundays had been long
and rather dreary days, but now he positively welcomed their coming and looked
forward to the hours when, instead of brooding over the past, he should listen
to her pleasant voice reading his few and neglected books. There was a new
atmosphere in his home--a new influence, under which his mind was awakening in
spite of his weariness and absorption in the interests of the farm. Alida was
always ready to talk about these, and her questions would soon enable her to
talk understandingly. She displayed ignorance enough, and this amused him,
but her queries evinced no stupidity. In reading to her father and in the
cultivation of flowers, she had obtained hints of vital horticultural
principles, and Holcroft said to her laughingly one evening at supper, "You'll
soon learn all I know and begin to teach me."

Her manner of deprecating such remarks was to exaggerate them and she replied,
"Yes, next week you will sell my eggs and I shall subscribe for the
agricultural paper my father used to take. Then will begin all the
improvements of book-farming. I shall advise you to sow oats in June, plant
corn in March, and show you generally that all your experience counts for
nothing."

This kind of badinage was new to the farmer, and it amused him immensely. He
did not grow sleepy so early in the evening, and as he was driving his work
prosperously he shortened his hours of labor slightly. She also found time to
read the county paper and gossip a little about the news, thus making a
beginning in putting him and herself en rapport with other interests than
those which centered in the farm. In brief, she had an active, intelligent
mind and a companionable nature. Her boundless gratitude for her home, which