God's Green Country

e picnics they had. A bank of violets or a nest of young robins never failed to move the girl to ecstasies. They generally stripped the bank of its flowers and she carried them away, withering

s if she touched them. "If I want a thing I want it. Life must be very easy for you cool, slow-feeling

shing herself that morning and judging from the shine and order of her kitchen she had done several other things besides. She wasn't dressed in any regulation afternoon costume; her gingham dress was turned in low at the neck and the sleeves rolled back at the elbows. A few little damp tendrils of hair cropped out from under he

g. She wasn't at all embarrassed to be found taking in her washing, but

to Billy, "and when the boys have taken you over thei

ety cyclopia moth, clinging sleepily to the curtain

earning a lot from their gardens and chickens and explorations of the fields, that will give them a clearer view of things whe

when they left her, "so perfectly at ease and so sure of

any class of women I know. This Mrs. Burns was a trained nurse before she was married. There are a dozen others just as fine and capable scatter

, or don't they want

a woman's standpoint. Naturally a girl prefers to work in a house where the water comes hot or cold from a faucet in an enamel sink, instead of where it has to be carried from a pump in the yard, whe

! A girl who had lived in t

have a great deal in themselves-they can make their own entertainment; then they have a live inte

make things differe

don't pay well enough to install big improvements and not many farmers know how to put in a low-cost equipment. Practically every farm that pays its way at all could afford the essential conveniences, and with labor as it is now, it looks as though power of s

the seat. She was ready to drop the s

m through half closed eyes, "you wa

ad. "It wouldn't be a very alluri

strange behaviour of "the agricultural fellow" during the day. On several occasions he had been seen patrolling the creeks which wound like threads of a s

atin' system," one of the vil

harnessing and putting to work the water-power in the district. He pointed out how the sight of a dozen young horses running wild in his pastures would impress the average farmer as an awful example of horse-power going to waste, how he would spend a good deal o

ling one foot in one minute, or every four hundred gallons falling ten feet in one minute meant the power of one horse going to waste; that one water horse-power would furnish light for the average farm; that five water horse-power would furnish light

just what a power system could be made to do, and beyond the pine woods, neighboring with the farm he had hoped to own, was a place where a stream from the hills ran everything that had formerly turned with a crank. He could arrange an excursion to the place. He could have the engineer who had gone over the ground here come out and explain just how the same principle could be carried out at home. He could get manufacturers to bring special

er a collection to fit the needs of any ordinary farm-house. The evening before the day of the demonstration she followed her shipment out to the farm, partly because the work ahead of her would require the thrifty precaution known in country lore as "taking the

of autumn-scented air, while down in the city the great human herd still slept, catching whatever faint little whiffs drifted in between brick walls. Field after field bristling with yellow stubble told of a harvest gathered in, but the orchards were still heavy with apples, their bright red glowing through a glittering coat of the night's frost. Here and there a corduroy of black furrows showed where the farmer was already t

the window her dahlias were blooming gloriously. In the orchard a flock of her turkeys were getting ready for the Thanksgiving market. Overhead was coming the soft thud of her baby's bare feet on the stairs. On a hill off among the pines a red maple flamed at the door of a crumbling house-an ideal site

ashions changed or things wore out, and when the stream from the hill was harnessed to furnish power for every machine in the barn, the house was trigged out with a dazzling array of electric lights. Apart from this, the returning ghost of a great-grandfather would not have noticed anyt

a shock. When it was suggested that where electricity was not available any ordinary washer could be driven by a little portable gasoline engine about the size of a lawn mower, they immediately had a presentiment of being caught in the belt. The simplest a

t water cistern and a pump plying into a kitchen sink. The next improvement would be a water front on the kitchen range and a hot water faucet, and these would lea

rest; they didn't resent being told that every time a woman took a step up in climbing a stair she had to actually lift her own weight-a waste of energy which they overcame in their own work by fitting their barns with feed-chutes and litter-carriers. They even listened with some show of interest to the fact that most of the tuberculosis in the country was due to such poor methods of heating the houses that the windows of sleeping rooms must be kept closed all winter to keep from freezing, and they d

is as much a nightmare to a woman as it is to her husband; she is willing to wait for everything until the place is clear, and the most of her life has gone; then, if they still want it, they can afford a most comfortable home to die in. Many parents argued that they had to look ahead if they were going to give their boys a start on farms of their own, but those of wider vision believed that the whole scheme

the need of things that were novelties in most farm homes, and could not grasp the significance of the array of washing machines, mops and what not strewn about the big kitchen, but they had time to talk to Ruth for

g the mechanics of the water-motor to a group of men. He was blissfully unconscious of how his muddy hip boots, and collarless shirt with here and there a smudge of machine oil, might appear to a girl who never saw men of her own social strata in any outdoor apparel less elegant than white tennis flannels. He didn't know that his unconcerned appearance as he was seemed almost like effrontery. She might have even admired it in some novel hero engineer hewing a railroad through a mountain, but there was nothing romantic about this; it was just grovelling in a muddy stream to show some two dozen farmers how a wheel went round; it was just the dir

cause they were back-to-the-landers they should be satisfied with the company of people of entirely different social interests. This agricultural young man who had filled in so nicely to give Marjorie a good time, who was so safe and unpresuming, had always seemed rather superior, probably on account of his college experience. He had always refused

t came into actual use in the district others would follow. When the last car had gone he had a scrub up at the spring, made the best of his disordered appearance and went to the house to find Ruth. Notwithstanding the success of the day's proceedings he had a heavy sense of d

instinct stirred strangely by something in the genuine home atmosphere of the place. He couldn't tell whether it was the motherly air of the woman who directed things, or the way the littlest sleepy towhead burrowed into his father's shoulder, or whether the spell was partly due to the rose-shaded light falling about the girl with her silky, dark hair and glowing eyes. They were not at all practised in magnetic arts, those eyes;

the woods; then the rocks shot up a steep wall on one side and on the other a rain-washed slope ran down to a level of fl

stopped

at do you think of it? I've gone over every foot of it and I know it's a good investment-that

ng sharp and black on the frosted grass and the moonlight filtering through the branches, it seemed to stand waiting for something to shelter and protect-rather a curious old sentinel too; w

ot?" s

elve miles fr

Why would you want

son could dream the wildest kind of dreams and then live them. You can hear the creek roaring over the hill; there's enough water power there to run a factory, and the house could be made pretty snug, I think; but sometimes I'm afraid I've just let myself be carried

way and the tone did not sound at all

er to ask a girl who has always had everythi

rapid, and not very comprehensive review of plans she had seen deve