Mr. Jeminy looked about him at the homely kitchen, with its brown crockery set away neatly on the shelves.  “If I stay with you,” he said, “I should like to work in the fields, and help with the sowing and the harvesting.”

“So you may,” said Aaron Bade.

Mr. Jeminy looked at Margaret.  “And you, madam?” he asked.  “Would you care for the company of a garrulous old man at evening in your kitchen?”

Margaret blushed with pleasure.  “Yes,” she said.

“Very well,” said Mr. Jeminy; “I will stay.”

In this fashion Mr. Jeminy settled down at Bade’s Farm, as farm hand to Aaron Bade.  At the end of a week he felt that he had nothing to regret.  He was active and spry, and believed himself to be useful.  In fact, he could not remember when he had been so happy.  High on his hill, he heard October’s skyey gales go by above his head, and in the noonday drowse, watched, from the shade of a tree, the crows fly out across the valley, with creaking wings and harsh, discordant cries.  In the early morning, he came tip-toeing down the stairs; from the open doorway he marked day rise above the east in bands of yellow light, and saw the foggy clouds of dawn slip quietly away, rising from the valleys, drifting across the hills; in the afternoon he labored in the fields, and at night, his tired body filled his mind with comfortable thoughts.

On his way to lunch, he stopped at the woodpile to get an armful of kindling for Mrs. Bade.  The sober way she looked at him as he came in, hid from all but herself the almost voluptuous pleasure it gave her merely to be waited on, a pleasure she was more than half afraid to enjoy, for fear at jealous heaven might take it away, and leave her with all her work to do, and bad habits besides.

Therefore, as she ladled out potatoes, two to a plate, she seemed, to look at her, busier than ever; and far from being grateful, might have been used to favors every day of her life, whereas all the while she was saying ecstatically to herself, “Lord, make me humble.”

For she saw in Mr. Jeminy all she had fancied as a girl, and lost hope in as a woman.  Life . . . life was, then, to be had—­leastways, a view of it, a good view of it—­was to be heard of, by special act of Grace, on Bade’s Farm, at Adams’ Forge—­of all places.  So she dressed in her neatest, and was kinder than ever to Aaron, who was missing it.  For she felt it was all just for her; she alone saw Mr. Jeminy for what he was, a grand, unusual peephole on the world.  It was her own private peep, she thought.  But she was wrong.  Aaron was peeping as hard as she, and pitying her, as she was pitying him, for all he thought she was missing.

As for Mr. Jeminy, he let them think what they pleased.  At first he was silent, out of shame.  But later he enjoyed it as much as they did.  “In Ceylon,” he would say, “the tea fields . . .”