This question surprised me, and I assented quickly, wondering what
would come next.

"I thought so," she said. "I have seen you on the road on your wheel,
and some one told me who you were. And now, since you have been so
kind to me, I am going to tell you exactly why I cannot ask you to
stop at our house. Everything is all wrong there to-day, and if I
don't explain what has happened, you might think that things are
worse than they really are, and I wouldn't want anybody to think
that."

[Illustration: "THE RAIN WAS COMING DOWN HARD"]

I listened with great attention, for I saw that she was anxious to
free herself of the imputation of being inhospitable, and although the
heavy rain and my rapid pace made it sometimes difficult to catch her
words, I lost very little of her story.

"You see," said she, "my father is very fond of gardening, and he
takes great pride in his vegetables, especially the early ones. He has
peas this year ahead of everybody else in the neighborhood, and it was
only day before yesterday that he took me out to look at them. He has
been watching them ever since they first came up out of the ground,
and when he showed me the nice big pods and told me they would be
ready to pick in a day or two, he looked so proud and happy that you
might have thought his peas were little living people. I truly believe
that even at prayer-time he could not help thinking how good those
peas would taste.

"But this morning when he came in from the garden and told mother that