is, I wouldn't enjoy having anyone here. You and I are just about company
enough. Still, if you feel that you'd like to have some help--"

"Oh, no! I haven't enough to do."

"But you're always a-doing. Well, if you're content, I haven't Christian
fortitude enough to make any changes."

She smiled and thought that she was more than content. She had begun to
detect symptoms in her husband which her own heart enabled her to interpret.
In brief, it looked as if he were drifting on a smooth, swift tide to the same
haven in which she was anchored.

One unusually warm morning for the season, rain set in after breakfast.
Holcroft did not fret in the least that he could not go to the fields, nor did
he, as had been his custom at first, find rainy-day work at the barn. The
cows, in cropping the lush grass, had so increased their yield of milk that it
was necessary to churn every other day, and Alida was busy in the dairy. This
place had become inviting by reason of its coolness, and she had rendered it
more so by making it perfectly clean and sweet. Strange to say, it contained
another chair besides the one she usually occupied. The apartment was large
and stone-flagged. Along one side were shelves filled with rows of shining
milk-pans. In one corner stood the simple machinery which the old dog put in
motion when tied upon his movable walk, and the churn was near. An iron pipe,
buried deep in the ground, brought cool spring water from the brook above.
This pipe emptied its contents with a low gurgle into a shallow, oblong
receptacle sunk in the floor, and was wide and deep enough for two stone
crocks of ample size to stand abreast up to their rims in the water. The
cream was skimmed into these stone jars until they were full, then Holcroft
emptied them into the churn. He had charged Alida never to attempt this part