Ralph was about to say that it would be a pity to cut down and alter that picturesque piece of old-fashioned attire into an ordinary garment, and that it would be well to keep it as a family relic, or to give it away to some one who could wear it as it was, but Miriam’s manner assured him that she was extremely sensitive on the subject of this gown, and he considered it wise to offer no further opinion about it.  So he went about his affairs, and Miriam, having resumed her ordinary dress, went out with her cook-book to a bench under a tree on the lawn.  She never stayed in the house when it was possible to be out of doors.

“I wish I could find out,” she said to herself, “what Dora Bannister intended to make for Ralph out of raspberries.  Whatever it is, I know I can make it just as well, and I want to do it all myself before the new cook comes.  It could not have been jam,” she said, as she turned over the leaves; “for Ralph does not care much for jam, and he would not have told her he liked that.  And then there is jelly; but it must take a long time to make jelly, and I do not believe she would undertake to give him that for dinner, made from raspberries picked this morning.  Besides, I cannot imagine Ralph saying he wanted jelly for his dinner.  Well, well!” she exclaimed aloud, as she stopped to read a recipe, “they do make tarts out of raspberries!  That must have been it, for Ralph is desperately fond of every kind of pastry.  I will go into the house this minute, and make him some raspberry tarts.  We shall have them for supper, even if they give him the nightmare.  I am not going to have him say again that he wished the new cook, as he kept calling Dora Bannister, had stayed a little longer.”

Alas! at dinner time Ralph had been guilty of that indiscretion.  Without exactly knowing it, he had missed in the meal a certain very pleasant element, which had been put into the supper and breakfast by Dora’s desire to gratify his especial tastes.  While he missed their visitor in many other ways, he alluded to her premature departure only in connection with their domestic affairs.

But so far as Miriam was concerned, he could have done nothing worse than this.  To have heard her brother say that Dora Bannister was the most lovely girl he had ever seen, and that he was filled with grief at losing the delights of her society, might have been disagreeable to her, or it might not.  But to have him even in the lightest way intimate that her housekeeping was preferable to that of his own sister nettled her self-esteem.

“I will show him,” she said, “that he is mistaken.”

In the pleasant coolness of the great barn, Ralph stretched himself on a pile of new-made hay to think.  He was a farmer, and he intended to try to be a good farmer, and he knew that good farmers, during working hours, do not lie down on piles of hay to think.  But notwithstanding that, in this hay-scented solitude, looking out of the great door upon the quiet landscape with the white clouds floating over it, he thought of Dora.  He had been thinking of her in all sorts of irregular and disjointed ways ever since he had risen in the morning; but now he wished to think definitely, and lay down here for that purpose.  One cannot think definitely and single-mindedly when engaged in farm work, especially if he sometimes finds himself a little awkward at said work and is bothered by it.