next day she told me that she couldn't understand a word about it, and
that it made Pink mad because she wouldn't tell him what to say to Peter
about it. Pink has grown fond of Peter, but he wouldn't try to read the
poem after the third stanza. But Peter went on back to help with the rye
crop, knowing nothing of all that.

Of course, I had all the confidence that there is in the world in Sam,
but I, about the first week in July, again began to feel responsible to
the world for Peter's play; and I might have made the awful blunder of
remonstrating with Peter or Sam or both of them if I hadn't got into so
much trouble with Edith and Tolly.

Now, Clyde Tolbot is a very business-like young man, and he ought to be
respected and considered for it, but that is just what Edith doesn't
seem to understand how to do. She wants to go on with her head level
with the moon, and Tolly wants to get married in November, and I think
he is perfectly right. He hasn't any family, and he says Edith's
"highstrikes," as he calls her moods and tenses, and the food at the
Hayesboro Inn, are making him thin and pale, and hurting the prospects
of The Electric Light Co.

"She acts as if she thought I was a cinnamon bear if I put my paw on her
fair hand. And she seems to think it is scandal because I wanted to buy
that old mahogany sideboard that the Vertreeses had to sell when they
inherited old Mrs. Anderson and her furniture from his mother," he
groaned, as he sat on my side porch with his head in his hands.

"Tolly," I said, with firm conviction in my voice and manner, "you must
do something heroic to shock Edith down to earth again, or into opening
her eyes as those kittens daddy gave Byrd did on their ninth day. The