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“I tried my persuasive powers on the animals, and succeeded moderately. ‘To live?’ I asked. ‘And for how long?’

“‘Until about the 3d of August,’ she replied. ‘That will be about three weeks.’

“‘You mean,’ I said in surprise, ‘something like this.’

“‘I do not,’ answered Anita. ‘I mean this very spot. To find something like it would require months. What I want, as I have told you over and over again, is a real cot with a real rill, to which we can go now and live for a little while that unsophisticated life for which my soul is longing.’

“Anita and I were taking a summer outing together, and were trying to get into free nature, away from people we knew, and had been several days at a mountain hotel, and were driving about the country. My black cobs now declined to stand any longer.

“‘Drive them down into the valley. There must be a road to that house,’ said Anita.

“I drove on for a short distance, and soon came to a wagon-track which descended to the little house. ‘Anita,’ said I, ‘I cannot go down that road; it is too rough and rocky, and we should break something. But why do you want to go down there, anyhow? You are not in earnest about living in such a place as that?’

“‘But I am in earnest,’ she answered sweetly but decisively. ‘I want to stay in this region and explore it. We both of us hate hotels, and I could be very happy in a cot like that (a little arranged, perhaps) until the 3d of August, when we have to go North. But I won’t ask you to go down that road, of course. Suppose we come again to-morrow with some quieter horses.’

“‘I am sorry,’ said I, ‘but I cannot do that. Mr. Baxter comes to-morrow. You know it was planned that he should always come Tuesdays.’

“She sighed. ‘I suppose everything must give way to business,’ she said, ‘and I shall have to wait until Wednesday. But one thing must certainly be agreed upon: when we get to that cot there must be no more Mr. Baxter; you can certainly plan for that, can’t you?’

“I made no immediate reply, because I was busy turning the horses in rather an awkward place; but when we were on the smooth highway and were trotting gayly back to the hotel, I discussed the matter more fully with Anita, and I found that what she had been talking about was not a mere fancy. Before coming to this picturesque mountain region she had set her heart upon some sort of camping out in the midst of real nature, and this cot-and-rill business seemed to suit her exactly.

“‘I want to go there and live,’ she said; ‘but I do not mean any Marie Antoinette business, with milk-pails decked with ribbons, and dainty little straw hats. I want to live in a cot like a cotter–that is, for us to live like two cotters. As for myself, I need it; my moral and physical natures demand it. I must have a change, an absolute change, and this is just what I want. I would shut out entirely the world I live in, and it is only in a real and true cot that this can be done as I want to do it.’

“She talked a great deal more on the same subject, and then I told her that if it suited her it suited me, and that on the day after to-morrow we would drive out again and examine the cot. For the rest of the day and the greater part of the evening Anita talked of nothing but her projected life in the valley; and before I went to sleep I was quite as much in love with it as she was. The next day it rained, but Mr. Baxter came all the same; weather never interfered with him.”