“It’s the long dress, isn’t it?”

“And milking cows and feeding pigs and pitching hay.”  She gave a toss to her head and held out her roughened red hands as proof of her assertion.  He stepped closer to her as if to examine them more carefully, but she swiftly hid them behind her back.  The rose, loosened from the tossing head, fell to the floor, and Dorian picked it up.  He sniffed at it then handed it to her.

“Where did you get it?” he asked.

She reddened.  “None of your—­Say, sit down, can’t you.”

Dorian seated himself on the sofa and invited her to sit by him, but she took a chair by the table.

“You’re not very neighborly,” he said.

“As neighborly as you are,” she retorted.

“What’s the matter with you, Carlia?”

“Nothing the matter with me.  I’m the same; only I must have grown up, as you say.”

A sound as of someone driving up the road came to them through the open door.  Carlia nervously arose and listened.  She appeared to be frightened, as she looked out to the road without wanting to be seen.  A light wagon rattled by, and the girl, somewhat relieved, went back to her chair.

“Isn’t it warm in here?” she asked.

“It’s warm everywhere.”

“I can’t stay here.  Let’s go out—­for a walk.”

“All right—­come on.”

They closed the door, and went out at the rear.  He led the way around to the front, but Carlia objected.

“Let’s go down by the field,” she said.  “The road is dusty.”

The day was closing with a clear sky.  A Sunday calm rested over meadow and field, as the two strolled down by the ripening wheat.  The girl seemed uneasy until the house was well out of sight.  Then she seated herself on a grassy bank by the willows.

“I’m tired,” she said with a sigh of relief.

Dorian looked at her with curious eyes.  Carlia, grown up, was more of a puzzle than ever.

“You are working too hard,” he ventured.

“Hard work won’t kill anybody—­but it’s the other things.”

“What other things?”

“The grind, the eternal grind—­the dreary sameness of every day.”

“You did not finish the high school.  Why did you quit?”

“I had to, to save mother.  Mother was not only doing her usual house work, but nearly all the outside choring besides.  Father was away most of the time on his dry farm too, and he’s blind to the work at home.  He seems to think that the only real work is the plowing and the watering and the harvesting, and he would have let mother go on killing herself.  Gee, these men!” The girl viciously dug the heel of her shoe into the sod.

“I’m sorry you had to quit school, Carlia.”

“Sorry?  I wanted to keep on more than I ever wanted anything in my life; but—­”

“But I admire you for coming to the rescue of your mother.  That was fine of you.”