days which had been looked forward to proved to be very rare in
this otherwise delightful corner of the world. My hostess and I
had made our shrewd business agreement on the basis of a simple
cold luncheon at noon, and liberal restitution in the matter of hot
suppers, to provide for which the lodger might sometimes be seen
hurrying down the road, late in the day, with cunner line in hand.
It was soon found that this arrangement made large allowance for
Mrs. Todd's slow herb-gathering progresses through woods and
pastures. The spruce-beer customers were pretty steady in hot
weather, and there were many demands for different soothing syrups
and elixirs with which the unwise curiosity of my early residence
had made me acquainted. Knowing Mrs. Todd to be a widow, who had
little beside this slender business and the income from one hungry
lodger to maintain her, one's energies and even interest were
quickly bestowed, until it became a matter of course that she
should go afield every pleasant day, and that the lodger should
answer all peremptory knocks at the side door.

In taking an occasional wisdom-giving stroll in Mrs. Todd's
company, and in acting as business partner during her
frequent absences, I found the July days fly fast, and it was not
until I felt myself confronted with too great pride and pleasure in
the display, one night, of two dollars and twenty-seven cents which
I had taken in during the day, that I remembered a long piece of
writing, sadly belated now, which I was bound to do. To have been
patted kindly on the shoulder and called "darlin'," to have been
offered a surprise of early mushrooms for supper, to have had all
the glory of making two dollars and twenty-seven cents in a single
day, and then to renounce it all and withdraw from these pleasant
successes, needed much resolution. Literary employments are so