"It's pretty near killed his mother. Seems funny; a young fellow with
nothing to do but spend money, getting it into his head to write books!
Well, they said I wasn't to tell anybody, and I _ain't_ told anybody but
you, and I thought as you was a writer, and pretty busy, I guessed you
wouldn't want to waste your time over his book. They say, folks do, that
it's first-rate, as far as it goes; but you see it don't never get any
farther, and it never will. I thought I'd better tell you about it,"
said Wilson, his plebeian, kindly face crimson with a delicate pity that
would have done honor to an aristocrat, and still working assiduously at
the little twig, "I knew you was a genuine writer yourself, and it
seemed a pity for you to take up your valuable time helpin' him on,
about something that can't amount to anything."

May he be forgiven that gentle falsehood!

I looked for a moment at the wide-spread field and distant woodland,
lying green in the peaceful sunshine, at the place grown so dear to me,
that now whirled before my eyes. Far down the road a heavy farm-wagon
creaked its way toward us, in a cloud of white dust.

"You did quite right to tell me, Wilson," I said, turning to go. "No one
shall hear of it from me."

I looked down at the buff envelope from "----'s Magazine," which I had
crushed in my hand, and smoothed it out mechanically, as I went on in
the increasing heat.

It was only August, but my summer was over.