sink, however, and turned the tap; a long husky cough came from it, but no water.

After this burst of energy she sank into a chair, amused to watch his arrangements. Thoroughly idle people—and there is not much question that Miss Fenimer was idle—learn a variety of methods for keeping other people at work, and probably the most effective of these is flattery. Christine may have been ignorant of the feminine arts of cooking and fire-making; but of the super-feminine art of flattery she was a thorough mistress.

Now as Riatt finished building his fire, and began to bring in buckets of snow to supply their need of water, the gentle flow of her flattery soothed him as the sound of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June. Nor, strangely enough, did the fact that he dimly apprehended its purpose in the least interfere with his enjoyment.

"If ever I'm thrown away on a desert island, I speak to be thrown away with you," she said. "There isn't another man of my acquaintance who could bring order out of these primitive conditions."

He laughed. "Well, you know," he said, "this isn't really what you'd call primitive. I was snowed up in Alaska once."

"Alaska! You've been snowed up in Alaska?" she echoed in the tone of a child who says: was it a black bear?

Oh, yes, it lightened his toil. Nevertheless, he asked for her assistance in trying to find something to eat. She knew no more about the kitchen than he did, but she advanced toward a door and opened it gingerly between her thumb and forefinger. It was the kitchen closet. She opened a tin box.

"There is something here that looks like gravel," she called. He rushed to her side. It was cereal. He found other supplies, too, a little salt, sugar, coffee, and a jar of bacon.

"How clever of you to know what they all are," she murmured, and he felt as if he had invented them out of thin air, like an Eastern magician.

He carried them back to the kitchen. "I wonder if you'd get the coffee grinder," he said.

She hadn't the faintest idea what a coffee grinder looked like, but she went away to find it, and came back presently with an object strange enough to serve any purpose.

"Is this it?" she asked.

"That's a meat chopper," he answered, and then laughed. "You're not a very good housekeeper, are you?"

"Of course not," she said. "Did you ever know an agreeable woman who was? Good housekeepers are always bores, because they can never for an instant get their minds off the most tiresome things in the world like bills, and how the servants are behaving. All clever women are bad housekeepers, and so they always find some one like you to take care of them."

He was putting the cereal to boil, and answered only after a second. "Perhaps you'll think me old-fashioned, but I cannot help respecting the art of housekeeping."

"Oh, so do I in its place," replied Miss Fenimer. "My maid does the whole thing capitally. But let me give you a test. Think of the very best housekeeper you ever met. Would you like to have her here instead of me? You may be quite candid."

Riatt stopped and considered an instant with his head on one side. "She'd make me awfully comfortable," he said.

Miss Fenimer nodded, as much as to say: yes, but even so—

"No," he said at length, as if the decision had been close. "No, after all I would rather do the work and have you. But it isn't because you are a poor housekeeper that I prefer you. It's because—"

Compliments upon her, charms were platitudes to Christine, and she cut him short. "Yes, it is. It's because I'm so detached, and don't interfere, and let you do things your own way, and think you so wonderful to be able to do them at all. Now if I knew how to do them, too, I should be criticizing and suggesting all the time, and you'd have no peace. You like me for being a poor housekeeper."

He smiled. "On that ground I ought to like you very much then," he answered.

"Perhaps you do," she said cheerfully. "Anyhow I'm sure you like me better than that other girl you were thinking of—that good housekeeper. Who is she?"

"I like her quite a lot."

"I see—you think she'd make a good wife."

"I think she'd make a good wife to any man who was fortunate enough—"

"Oh, what a dreadful way to talk of the poor girl!"

"On the contrary, I admire her extremely."

"I believe you are engaged to her."

"Not as much as you are to Hickson."

Christine laughed. "From the way you describe her," she said, "I believe she'd make a perfect wife for Ned."

"Oh, she's much too good for him."

"Thank you. You seem to think I'll do nicely for him."

"Ah, but she's much better than you are."

"And yet you said you'd rather have me here than her."

He smiled. "I think," he said, and Christine rather waited for his next words, "I think I shall go down and see if I can't get the furnace going."

Nevertheless, she said to herself when he was gone, "I should not feel at all easy about him, if I were the other girl."

She knew there was no prospect of their being rescued that night. When the sleigh arrived at the Usshers', if it ever did arrive, its empty shattered condition would suggest an accident. The Usshers were at that moment probably searching for them in ditches, and hedges. The marks of the sleigh would be quickly obliterated by the storm. No, she thought comfortably, there was no escape from the fact that their situation was compromising. The only question was how could the matter be most tactfully called to his attention. At the moment he seemed happily unaware that such things as the proprieties existed.

At this his head appeared at the head of the cellar stairs.

"Watch the cereal, please," he said, "and see that it doesn't burn."

"Like King Alfred?"

"Not too much like him, please, for that pitiful little dab of food is about all we have to eat."

When he was gone Christine advanced toward the stove and looked at the cereal—looked at it closely, but it seemed to her to be but little benefited by her attention. Presently she discovered on a shelf beside the laundry clock a pinkish purple paper novel, called: "The Crime of the Season." Its cover depicted a man in a check suit and side-whiskers looking on in astonishment at the removal of a drowned lady in full evening dress from a very minute pond. Christine opened it, and was so fortunate as to come full upon the crime. She became as completely absorbed in it as the laundress had been before her.

She was recalled to the more sordid but less criminal surroundings of real life by a strong pungent smell. She sniffed, and then her heart suddenly sank as she realized that the cereal was burning. She recognized a peculiarly disagreeable flavor about which she had often scolded the cook, thinking such carelessness on the part of one of her employees to be absolutely inexcusable.

She ran to the head of the cellar stairs. "Mr. Riatt!" she called.

He was now shaking down the furnace, and the noise completely drowned her voice. "Oh, dear, what a noisy man he is," she thought and when he had finished, she called again: "Mr. Riatt!"

This time he heard. "What is it?" he answered.

"Mr. Riatt, what shall I do? The cereal is burning terribly."

"I should think it was," he said. "I can smell it down here." He