It Pays to Smile

m dies chiefly because it is so seldom born, which I

at the time. Because, of course, we should have been extremely lonely on the northern ranch without Mr. Markheim, especially after Richard, the chauffeur, enlisted, and dear Mr. Pegg began his increasingly frequent trips to Washington, where he had something to do with supplying the Army with fruit. The way that man constantly r

hat a millionaire could be so human or a nouveau riche so condescending, or rather, so tolerable. But I suppose his being in lo

the war, though I understand that he lent somebody a great dea

y every day when it wasn't twice a day, and at first Peache

ich would have rendered his devotion to an older woman far more suitable, and I was confident that nothing could shake her fidelity to the dear duke, that handsome and romantic rascal-that is, if he was a rascal, which now se

ail but she looked for a letter in his handwriting. But she did not discuss him, even with me. And when Mr. Sebastian came over from his toy ranch she would ride with him, talk with

to make a record of the war though it occurred at this time, inasmuch as several quite competent persons, including Mr. Wilson and the Associated Press, have covered the matter pretty carefu

re so rich as a community that we could do without the scandalous increases of which we read in our week-late New York Sunday newspapers. But what I mean is that somehow war seemed to belong to the East rather than to us. And I think we worried more over Mexico than over Flanders, and who c

n our life there it seems punctuated by two great events and nothing else, though at the time of liv

the swimming pool which Mr. Pegg had built into an angle of the ranch house, a gaunt white-painted frame building, very like a big New England farm-house, as are many of the homesteads of northern California. It was a heavenly mild late September day, with th

rlier, for we picked green and sweated our oranges. Beyond the sentinel trees with their yellow fruit glowing like lanterns in the dark foliage, a flock of runner ducks squawked noisily in the head ditch, which had flowed by the house since the early days when Peaches' mother lived there and used to get the water for her household from it. Distantly a file of turbaned Hindu pickers, bound for a neighbor's walnut grove, pas

known for four years, now took on its pristine strangeness once more, and the letter in my hands brought a wave of homesickness upon me-not for Italy

did, though, of course, it tol

as brave. Things have changed so, and people are gone. I hear among others that our gay, mysterious and gallant Sandro was killed at -- Sir Anthony told me, and he got it from Captain Silvano, whom you may r

with grave golden eyes, her body actually seeming to give off a magnetic force which compelled me again

id too quietly

it silently, still looking off at the purple cloud bank of the coast range with its snow patches melting into the fleece of the little clouds which seemed to rest upon them-the barren gold-and-violet mountains, so infinite, eternal, restful and inspiring

ference between Alicia and other young women of my acquaintance-and I knew that there was nothing I could say to her just then. She had the strength of those hills, or rather mountains-she was made of their very substance. I felt helpless. Besides, it was time to go through the lower orch

unable to endure her sobbing unless I could participate in it. And so I went into her room

If only you had a souven

r Peaches unexpected.

figure in her striped pyjamas-and produced an envelope from which she drew a worn case

the rose he picked with the littl

it?" I ma

g written in Italian inside. He left it by

ent?" I s

t has his name in it. I was going to return it next

broke d

hout seeing the contents. If only I had looked-insisted on looking at it then, what a lot of trouble we would have been spared! But as my dear father used to say, it is easy to be wise in retrospect. At the time I thought

ellow glow under the green on the fruit, and work until it was so dark that the prime oranges were indistinguishable from the unripe ones, and the Mohammedans would come out of the orch

ort to rise early, once you are accustomed to so doing. It is a common observation that when one does get up at

Chinaman instructions about the meals, which instructions he would later pretend not to have heard, and had ridden over to the sluice at the top of the head ditch to see why the new feed to the seedling flat wasn't working properly, and taken a look at the flock of turkeys whic

an ever, but perfectly composed, and even smiled a l

she whispered. "I'll just

ut none came, either then or later in the long sheds where the sweated fruit roared down the channel of the separator, falling into the bins like golden hail, which the wives

never once during the twelve months which followed did I know her to fail in her work-her magnificent constitution helping, no doubt, to pull her through. But I could see that a permanent change h

second occurred more than a year later, in November, 1918, when we, like many another group of rancher

an open fire, a not unmixed pleasure by reason of our being under some anxiety about the trees. But on the w

t appeared almost foreign to me, inasmuch as I had not knitted any socks since that momentous pair at Monte Carlo, a surprising faculty for a more active existence having developed in me during my sojourn on the ranch. At any rate I had sent out the wool, finished my last jar of marmalade, of which I had made an experimental thousand for a market which Mr. Pegg intended the development of

ture was none other than the Madonna of the Lamp, for which he had paid five hundred thousand dollars. Since his purchase of it the picture had been stored, and it seemed to me a strange time to trouble with gettin

I have given directions for the remodeling of the south wall of my library in the Ossining house for its occupancy. It will hang all alone on that wall

m the bowl of ripe olives with which he was occup

with it!" said Markheim. "S

ng to my feet. But nob

face broke into a sort of crooked smile a

aches picking out a friend of her father's! Why,

o, Free! Stop standing there like a dummy! People get married all the time

he had nagged her into it with his ceaseless attentions. Of course we had nothing against him, absolutely nothing, because after all being a millionaire art collector is not in itself strictly criminal. But with the memory of that beautiful romance in Italy still fresh in my own mind I could not understand it-I simply could not;

nd patting her on the shoulder, and saying how wonderful it all was, when in reality I wanted to drag her out of the room and shake her for being such a grea

wonderful five-carat diamond ring which Markhei

is it to be?" Mr.

owly from her marvelous jewel

she said slowly, "to marry hi

ears, the expectancy

inute that the fire

les. The hands were soon straggling in from their camp in the gulch by the river. Somebody, Mr. Pegg, I think, tried the telephone, but could get no answer. By this time almost everybody on the ranch had assembled before the house, shivering with the frost and s

he uniform of an American captain jumped down with the aid of his uninjured arm, the other being supported by a sling, and came running

hoolhouse fire? Hell! The armistice

that moment that I recognized the strong family resemblance and

ollection of kissing several persons, the Chinaman among them. But only one thing remains clearly in my mind-Alicia standing like a stone in a corn

's the end of the w