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Jim laughed disproportionately. He thought her wonderfully witty. And he and the help ate so much that Annie opened her eyes. She had thought there would be enough left for supper. But there was nothing left.

For the next two weeks Jim was able to be much with her; and they amused themselves by decorating the house with the bright curtainings that Annie had brought, and putting up shelves for a few pieces of china. She had two or three pictures, also, which had come from her room in her old home, and some of those useless dainty things with which some women like to litter the room.

“Most folks,” Jim explained, “have to be content with one fire, and sit in the kitchen; but I thought, as this was our honeymoon, we would put on some lugs.”

Annie said nothing then; but a day or two after she ventured,–

“Perhaps it would be as well now, dear, if we kept in the kitchen. I’ll keep it as bright and pleasant as I can. And, anyway, you can be more about with me when I’m working then. We’ll lay a fire in the front-room stove, so that we can light it if anybody comes. We can just as well save that much.”

Jim looked up brightly. “All right,” he said. “You’re a sensible little woman. You see, every cent makes a difference. And I want to be able to pay off five hundred dollars of that mortgage this year.”

So, after that, they sat in the kitchen; and the fire was laid in the front room, against the coming of company. But no one came, and it remained unlighted.

Then the season began to show signs of opening,–bleak signs, hardly recognizable to Annie; and after that Jim was not much in the house. The weeks wore on, and spring came at last, dancing over the hills. The ground-birds began building, and at four each morning awoke Annie with their sylvan opera. The creek that ran just at the north of the house worked itself into a fury and blustered along with much noise toward the great Platte which, miles away, wallowed in its vast sandy bed. The hills flushed from brown to yellow, and from mottled green to intensest emerald, and in the superb air all the winds of heaven seemed to meet and frolic with laughter and song.

Sometimes the mornings were so beautiful that, the men being afield and Annie all alone, she gave herself up to an ecstasy and kneeled by the little wooden bench outside the door, to say, “Father, I thank Thee,” and then went about her work with all the poem of nature rhyming itself over and over in her heart.

It was on such a day as this that Mrs. Dundy kept her promise and came over to see if the young housekeeper needed any of the advice she had promised her. She had walked, because none of the horses could be spared. It had got so warm now that the fire in the kitchen heated the whole house sufficiently, and Annie had the rooms clean to exquisiteness. Mrs. Dundy looked about with envious eyes.

“How lovely!” she said.

“Do you think so?” cried Annie, in surprise. “I like it, of course, because it is home, but I don’t see how you could call anything here lovely.”

“Oh, you don’t understand,” her visitor went on. “It’s lovely because it looks so happy. Some of us have–well, kind o’ lost our grip.”

“It’s easy to do that if you don’t feel well,” Annie remarked sympathetically. “I haven’t felt as well as usual myself, lately. And I do get lonesome and wonder what good it does to fix up every day when there is no one to see. But that is all nonsense, and I put it out of my head.”

She smoothed out the clean lawn apron with delicate touch. Mrs. Dundy followed the movement with her eyes.