Northmore’s interest in the farm. It had a peculiar interest for the feminine part of his household in the early days of July, when wheat harvest had come and the threshing machine was abroad in the land. It was too much to expect of Jake Erlock, the tenant at the farm, who, since his wife’s death had lived there alone, that he would provide meals for the score of threshers who would bring the harvesting appetite to the work of the great day. Clearly this fell to the Northmores, and the doctor’s wife had risen to the part with her own characteristic energy. But for once, on the very eve of the threshing, she found herself facing a sudden embarrassment. Relatives from a distance had made their unexpected appearance as guests at her house, and to leave them behind, or take them into the crowded doings at the farm, seemed alike impossible. The prompt proposal of her daughters, that they, with the combined wisdom of their seventeen and nineteen years, should manage the harvest dinner, hardly seemed a plan to be adopted, and would have found scant attention but for the unlooked-for support it received from one of the neighbors.

“Now why don’t you let ’em do it?” said Mrs. Elwell, who had happened in at the doctor’s an hour after the arrival of the guests. “You’ve got everything planned out, of course, and there’ll be lots of the neighbor women in to help. There always is.”

She caught the look of entreaty in the eyes of the girls and the doubt in the eyes of their mother, and added, “Now I think of it, I could go out there myself just as well as not. There isn’t anything so very much going on at our house to-morrow, and I’d be right glad to take a hand in it. I’ll risk it but what the girls and I can manage.”

Manage! There was no question on that score. Mrs. Northmore’s eyes grew moist and she opened her lips to speak, but her good friend was before her, her pleasant face at that moment the express image of neighborly kindness. “Now, with all you’ve done for us, you and the doctor, to make a fuss over a little thing like this!” she said. And Mrs. Northmore, with the grace which can receive as well as render a favor, accepted the offer without a protest.

That was how it happened that Esther and Kate Northmore went to the harvesting at the farm, in their mother’s stead, the next morning. Kate, at least, carried no anxiety, but Esther, as the older, could not lay aside some uneasiness, not so much lest things should go wrong as lest their generous friend might be too much burdened, and the thought of all there was to do lent an unusual gravity to her sensitive face.

It was a perfect July day, with the sky an unbroken blue except for the clouds which floated like golden chaff high in the zenith. The great machine, flaming in crimson against a background of gold, stood among the ripened sheaves, and a score of sunburned men urged the labor which had begun betimes.

Ah, there is no harvest like this of the wheat. It comes when the year is at its flood, and the sun, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, holds long on his course against the slow-creeping night. What ingathering of the later months, when the days have grown short and chilly, can match it in joy? The one is like the victory that comes in youth, when the success of to-day seems the promise for to-morrow; the other is the reward that comes to the worn and enfeebled man, who whispers in the midst of his gladness: “How slight at best are the gains of life!”

Esther was too young to moralize and too busy with the very practical work of helping with the dinner to grow poetical over the harvest scene, but the beauty of it did hold her for a minute with a long admiring gaze as she stood by the well, where she had gone for a pitcher of fresh water.

A man in gray jeans had hurried from the edge of the field at sight of her, to lower the buckets hanging from the old-fashioned windlass. She detained him a moment when he had handed her the dripping pitcher.

“We couldn’t have had a better day than this, could we?” she said. “And what a good thing it is that you and father decided to put in the wheat! He was speaking of that at breakfast this morning, and he says it was all your doing. There was such a poor crop last year that for his part he was almost afraid to try it again.”

The man’s face shone with gratified pride. “Well, I reckon the doctor ain’t fretting over it much now that I had my way,” he said. And then he added modestly: “But I might have missed it. You never can tell how a crop’ll come out till you see the grain in the measure.”

“Well, we’re seeing that to-day,” said the girl. “How much will there be?”

“We can’t rightly tell till it’s all threshed out,” said the man; “but Tom Balcom ’lows it’ll average as well’s anything they’ve threshed, and they’ve had thirty-five bushels to the acre.”

Figures did not mean much to Esther, but her “Oh!” had a note of appreciation. Then, as he was turning away, she said earnestly: “I hope we shall have a good dinner for you, Mr. Erlock. Mother was ever so sorry she couldn’t come out to-day herself; I believe she was afraid you wouldn’t fare as well as you ought without her. But Mrs. Elwell came, and between us all we won’t let you suffer.”

“I hain’t a bit o’ doubt about the victuals being good,” said the man, gallantly. “I hope you found things all right in the house. I tried to red up a little for you.”

“Oh, everything was in beautiful order, and the women are all praising your good housekeeping,” said Esther, smiling.

He looked at once pleased and embarrassed. “I did the best I could,” he said, then turned with an awkward nod and hurried again to his work.

She remembered hers too, and hastened with her pitcher back to the house. It was a one-story frame, with gray shingled sides and a deep drooping roof whose forward projection formed a porch across the entire front. Ordinarily it wore an expression of shy reserve, but to-day, with doors and windows open, and the hum of voices sounding through and round it, it seemed to have taken a new interest in life and looked a willing part of the cheerful scene.

The kitchen which the girl entered was full of country women, so full indeed that it seemed a wonder they could accomplish any work, but every one was busy except a young woman with a baby in her arms, who sat complacently watching the labors of the others.

It is the neighborly fashion in the middle West for the women of adjoining farms to help each other in the labors of this busiest time in the year, and the custom had not been omitted to-day because there was no one to return the service. It was rendered willingly as ever, partly from regard for Dr. Northmore, and partly from sympathy with the lonely householder who managed his farm.

“I had to stop and talk a minute with Jake Erlock,” said Esther, apologetic for her slight loitering now that she felt the hurry of the work again. “He came up to draw the water for me, and you ought to have seen him blush when I told him you all thought he was a good housekeeper.”

“Well, if he has any doubt what we think on that point, he’d better come in here and we’ll tell him,” said a woman who was grinding coffee at a mill fixed to the wall. “I don’t believe there’s another man in this township that would manage as well as he does. I wouldn’t answer for the way things would look at our house if ’twas my man that had the running of ’em.”

Groans and headshakings followed this remark. Apparently none of the women present felt any confidence in the ability of their respective men to run the domestic machinery.

“Well, Mis’ Erlock was a mighty good housekeeper herself,” observed one of them. “And I reckon Jake thinks it wouldn’t be showing proper respect to her memory to let everything go at loose ends now she’s gone. I tell you, Jake’s an uncommon good man in more ways than