While at this work, I was approached by a gentleman, who seemed to come from a house two or three hundred yards off.

“Moved into the cottage, it seems,” said he.

“Yes,” I replied.  “Do you know the place?  The agent said there was excellent water here, but I can’t find it.”

“He meant there was good water in my well, where all occupants of the cottage have drawn water for several years.  The well belonging to your place was covered up when the road was cut through, a few years ago, and neighbor Hubbell—­well, I don’t say anything against him—­neighbors must be neighborly, but folks do say he’s too stingy to dig a new well.  That’s the reason the cottage hasn’t been occupied much for the last few years.  But everybody is welcome to draw from my well—­come along.”

I followed the kind-hearted man, but I wished that the liquid depth of the agent’s blue eyes had a proper parallel upon the estate which he had imposed upon me.  I returned as full of wrath as my pail was of water, when, across the fence, I saw Sophronia’s face, so suffused with tender exaltation, that admiration speedily banished ill nature.

But it was for a brief moment only, for Sophronia’s finely-cut lips parted and their owner exclaimed: 

“Oh, Pierre!  What a charming pastoral picture—­you and the pail, and the lawn as a background!  I wish we might always have to get water from our neighbor’s, well.”

We retired early, and in the delightful quiet of our rural retreat, with the moon streaming through our chamber window, Sophronia became poetic, and I grew too peaceful and happy even to harbor malice against the agent.  The eastern sun found his way through the hemlocks to wake us in the morning, and the effect was so delightfully different from the rising bell of the boarding-house, that when Sophronia indulged in some freedom with certain of Whittier’s lines, and exclaimed: 

  “Sad is the man who never sees
  The sun shine through his hemlock trees”

I appreciated her sentiment, and expressed my regard in a, loving kiss.  Again I made a fire out of doors, boiled coffee, fried ham and eggs, made some biscuit, begged some milk of our neighbor, and then we had a delightful little breakfast.  Then I started for the station.

“Don’t forget the stove, dear,” said Sophronia, as she gave me a parting kiss; “and be sure to send a butcher, and baker, and grocer, and—­”

Just then our domestic appeared and remarked: 

“Arah ye may as well get another girl; the likes ai me isn’t goin’ to bring wather from half-a-mile away.”

Sophronia grew pale, but she lost not an atom of her saintly calmness; she only said, half to herself: 

“Poor thing! she hasn’t a bit of poetry in her soul.”