ones. I wonder why."

"Some years they bloom lighter than Mother's and other years still
darker--just another one of the mysteries," he answered as he leaned
against the gate-post and looked down at her with a smile. He was
tall, and strong, and forceful, with a clean-cut young face which
was lit by Mother Mayberry's very own black-lashed, serene gray
eyes, and his very evident air of a man of affairs had much of the
charm of Mother Mayberry's rustic dignity. His serge coat, blue
shirt and soft gray tie had a decided cut of sophistication and were
worn with a most worldly grace that was yet strangely harmonious
with his surroundings. For with all of his distinctions in
appearance and attainments, as a man he struck no discord when
contrasted with Mr. Pike's shirt-sleeved, butternut-trousers
personality and he seemed but the flowering of Buck Peavey's store-
clothes ambitions. The accord of it all struck Miss Wingate so
forcibly that unconsciously she gave voice to the feeling.

"How at home you are in all this--this?" she paused and raised her
eyes to his with a hint of helplessness to express herself within
them.

"Simple life," he supplied with a smile that held a bit of banter.

"It's not so simple as one would think to balance a pie plate on one
hand and cut around it with a knife so the edges aren't jagged--to
be all consumed within the hour," she answered with spirit, rising
to the slight challenge in his voice and smile. "And there are other
most complicated things I have discovered that--"