HE two houses, the little white one and the big yellow one, stood side by side on the country road. Probably they had definite latitude and longitude, but you will better understand Rilla Everdean's description of their site as being "just half way between Tuppertown and nowhere."

The little white house was distinguished by a big roof-skylight and a name. The big yellow one was nameless, but it had a cupola and a "For Sale" sign nailed to one of the veranda posts. You might have thought, seeing them sitting vacant and tenantless there by the roadside, with nothing in sight but the empty fields and a few trees, that they had come together for the sake of companionship, and that the picket fence between them was an officious up

start.

Mr. Hewitt Tredway, however, viewed the surroundings with complete satisfaction. Peace and quiet were what Mr. Tredway most desired, for the next six months, at least, and when his friend Baxter, the artist, offered him the use of Placid Cottage he had eagerly accepted.

'But you'll find it rather lonely, I'm afraid," said Baxter. "The Harkways, who used to be our only neighbors, have moved to California."

"Neighbors are exactly what I don't want," said Tredway. "I mean to work on my Theory all summer, and that, you know, demands continued concentration."

This Theory of Tredway's-he always spoke of it as if it should be written in capitals throughout-was the result of a two years' post-graduate course and the absence of a necessity for doing anything else. To explain what it was-well, only Tredway could do that, and no one ever really knew what he was driving at when he was through. Beside, it makes no difference at all now what it meant. At the time he regarded it as tremendously important. But then, Hewitt Tredway took himself and his doings very seriously.

He brought with him to Placid Cottage an old housekeeper, a small trunk, and a big box of books. As soon as he had unpacked these last he plunged into the Theory.

Almost anyone but Tredway would have noticed the things which soon began happening to the big house next door. The shutters were thrown back, the windows opened, the "For Sale" sign pulled down, and van loads of furniture moved in. A gray-haired, kindly faced woman seemed to be in charge. Tredway's housekeeper guessed that the big house was being converted into a summer hotel, and she rejoiced secretly. To be sure, she guessed wrong. As for Tredway, he remained entirely oblivious of his surroundings until one morning about a week after his arrival a two-horse covered stage drove out from the village. Tredway was sitting at his study window and could have looked across the picket fence to the front gate of the big house, but he had a book in either hand and one on his knee, and did not raise his eyes.

As the stage stopped, someone within said: "All together now, one-two-three!"

There ensued a rattling, penetrating, earsplitting volume of sound out of which might have been deciphered this jubilant refrain:

Chop-sticks-chow-chow-mustard-filled
Sunshine kids of St. Mark's Guild!
Chop-sticks-chow-chow-you know now-
Hoop la! Hoop la! Wow-wow-wow!

At the final howl Tredway dropped his books and stood staring in open-mouthed wonder. He saw the stage emptied, as one shakes rats from a bag, of a score of youngsters, who leaped and laughed and shouted as they swarmed into the next yard. Behind them came a cheerful-looking young woman, who made a trumpet of her hands and called to the gray-haired matron ‹ › the veranda: "We're here!"

"It's perfectly obvious," said Tre to no one in particular. Then he clos、 his study window with a bang, and resolutely turned his back on the big house.

This move of the stoop-shouldered, spectacled young man did not escape the big gray eyes of the young woman. She laughed and said: "It appears that we are not to be popular with our neighbors, Mrs. Norris." Served with his dinner Tredway had a full account of the folks next door, in spite of his protests that he really didn't care for the information which his housekeeper had gathered from their cook.

"It's one of those summer homes where they send poor children from the city for a vacation," announced the housekeeper. "They get 'em in lots of twenty, fresh ones every two weeks. Did you ever hear such a racket, Mr. Tredway? It'll be like living next to a Wild West show, I guess. But the ladies are real lovely, both of them. Don't you think the young one, that's Miss Everdean, is awful pretty? The cook over there's a good soul, too, and she'll be lots of company for

"You may serve the coffee," said Tredway curtly. "I'm not especially interested in their cook."

For several weary hours Mr. Hewitt Tredway groped desperately about before he could pick up the scattered ends of thought which he was weaving into his grand Theory; but once he had recovered them, he was quite as indifferent to the riot which raged without as he had been to the previous stillness. This was very fortunate for his peace of mind, as the Sunshiners, whose manners were such as you might expect-only worse-paid no more attention to the picket fence than if it had been an imaginary line, like the equator. At almost any hour of the day, had he looked out, he could have seen a boy climbing over it, laden with flowers, unripe fruit, and other precious pillage. But his eyes seldom left his books. Had it not been for an apple tree in the back yard, Tredway and the Sunshiners might have remained total strangers.

It was only the morning after they came that he was roused from his studies by someone calling excitedly through the open window. He looked up to find the young won from the big house standing on tip

There was nothing to do, of course, but to go. He trailed after her to the rear of the house, where he beheld the terrorstricken Ikey, his thin legs frantically treading the unsubstantial air as he dangled from a top branch.

"Hold tight, Ikey! The man will climb up and get you," encouraged Miss Everdean.

"No, no!" protested Tredway. "Really, I am not a good climber. I never could do it."

"But you must do something. Think, think!" Miss Everdean was staring up at Ikey, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands. "A ladder!" she exclaimed. "No, that won't do. A life net! Oh, if we had a life net! I mean a table-cloth or a bed spread! Run!" And with this she seized the inert Tredway by the shoulders, whirled him about, and shoved him vigorously toward the cottage. The initial impetus thus gained lasted until he rushed pantingly back with a green table-cover snatched from his study table. He thrust it into her hands.

"No, you goose! Grab that side! Now stretch it tight and get right under him. There! Now drop, Ikey!"

The dangling Ikey cast one frightened look below.

"I-I-I dassent," he howled. "You must, Ikey, you must! If you don't I'll shake the tree."

Perhaps it was because of the threat, perhaps Ikey's fingers were unequal to the strain. At any rate he suddenly obeyed. He struck the green cover squarely enough, but then he ricochetted toward Tredway, hitting him about amidships.

"Ugh!" remarked Tredway, just as he went to the grass with Ikey folded in his

arms.

"Look out-you'll hurt him!" warned Miss Everdean.

Having no breath which he could spare for frivolous conversation, Tredway glared indignantly through his spectacles at her, disentangled himself from the undamaged Ikey, and started for the cottage.

"You've forgotten the table-cover, Miss Everdean called after him, but he paid no heed. So she wrapped Ikey in it and crawled through a newly made gap in the picket fence.

Almost the first object to catch Tred

way's eye as he entered his study was a burnt-wood panel above the fireplace. On it Baxter had artistically pyrographed the words "Placid Cottage." Wrenching the board from the brass hooks that held it in place, Tredway threw the thing into a

corner.

An hour or so later, seeing her neighbor sitting with a towel tied about his head, Miss Everdean only smiled. But after supper, when the bee stings of the Foley twins had been soothed with poultices; when the Giovanni boy had been well dosed with green-apple antidote; when the entire twenty had been safely distributed among the rows of white iron cots in the cool upper chambers, and there had fallen upon the Home a grateful calm, Miss Everdean went forth with the olive branch.

"Don't you want your table-cover?" she asked, holding it over the fence. He came out and thanked her for it with cold formality.

Angry, are you?" queried Miss Everdean mildly.

before Tredway could reply he found himself alone, absent-mindedly trying to stuff the green table-cover into his pocket.

For a long time afterward Tredway sat with a book open before him, trying to persuade himself that he was at work. At last he exclaimed, as if making some important discovery: "By jove! I believe she was making game of me, all the while!"

With this as a starting point he began to consider how this girl with the impudent gray eyes might be made to know in what contempt he held such as she. Dared to mock him, had she? And he a man with that in his brain which was to rattle the dry bones of Science! Only a frivolous, saucy girl with freckles on her nose! Well, she should know how it felt to be utterly ignored. What if she did have long curves, and gray eyes that could shift and roll? Let her save her tricks for some soft-headed youth, not try them on a man who had before him a work to be done.

Most of the young women whom Tredway happened to know-and they were not

"That's right. Besides, it's bad form to quarrel with your neighbors. What do you think of my chow-chow band, anyway?"

"Beg pardon-your what?"

"That's what I call my Sunshiners; they're such a mixed lot: all nationalities, you know. But you'll find them entertaining little rascals."

"I'm afraid not. I am not particularly fond of children."

"Aren't you? Why, I thought you were by the way you hugged little Ikey this morning."

Tredway stared over the top of his reading-glasses at the young woman on the other side of the fence. Her face was grave enough, but there was a suggestion of impudence in her big gray eyes.

as he took himself. Generally they behaved as though they were half afraid of him, which tickled his vanity immensely.

But Rilla Everdean had been brought up with half a dozen brothers; she had attended a co-ed. university; she had taken a course in hospital nursing, and she was awed by no manner of man, spectacled or otherwise.

Thus it happened that when Tredway took pains to turn his back on her next morning she failed to notice it, in proof of which she smiled at him when next their glances met across the picket fence. In spite of his grim resolution to do something very different, Tredway smiled back, and then shut his jaws angrily because he did it. To even matters he set himself to watch for another opportunity. But in vain he followed her with his eyes as she

"Well, it was your apple tree, anyway," rejoined Miss Everdean irrelevantly. "If it hadn't been for your tree, little Ikey wouldn't have gotten into trouble."

"I apologize for the apple tree." "That's real nice of you, at least. Now I'll apologize for calling you a goose-but you did act like one. Good-night." And

children in noisy games. Although he sat there in plain sight, she had forgotten all about him. And when at last she did chance to look his way she had caught him watching her and looked away again before he could assume the cold stare with which he had meant to reprove her. It was a trivial thing, to be sure, yet it left Tredway disturbed of mind and in a bad temper.

This state of affairs was unknown to "Spud" McCarty, of course. "Spud" had various knowledge, chiefly of how to do things without being detected. His particular exploit on this occasion was the robbing of a rosebush that grew almost immediately under Tredway's study window. It was an adroit piece of vandalism. He had shinned back over the fence and was wondering what to do with his loot when he met Miss Everdean.

"Why, Spud! Where did you get all those roses?" she demanded suspiciously. "He guv 'em ter me," said "Spud"; then, on sudden inspiration-"fer youse. He tol' me to give 'em to youse. "Who did?"

'Spud, do you know what we do with little boys who tell fibs?"

"Spud" grinned audaciously.

"We wash their tongues with soap." But she took the roses, and one of them she wore in her hair. She did not encounter Tredway.again until it occurred to Otto Myers to pry the cover from an abandoned well and fall in. Then she ran for Tredway to help her pull Otto to the top. Otto came up very damp, much frightened, but wholly unhurt, there being no more than a foot of water at the bottom.

"Why, how speckled he is about the face!" commented Tredway.

"So he is," assented Miss Everdean. “Measles, I suppose. I've been expecting it."

"Measles!" Tredway backed hastily

away.

"One would think I had said small-pox!" Miss Everdean was hurrying the dripping Otto toward the Home. As soon as she reappeared Tredway came to the fence and waited.

"I beg pardon, but are you certain that the boy has measles?" he asked anxiously.

"Perfectly. But there's nothing to be alarmed about. I have handled dozens of

cases.

Do

'Oh, with sneezing and coughing. you feel it coming on now? When you do, come over to us. We'll put you in our isolation ward on the top floor. You'll be fed on bread and milk pudding and given picture books to look at."

How amusing you must find me," said Tredway, as he turned abruptly from the laughing gray eyes.

Indeed, it did seem very absurd to Rilla Everdean that a grown man should be so frightened. In due time, however, she heard him coughing in a way that sounded suspiciously like the true "measles bark.’ When she saw his reddened eyelids she was almost convinced that he had "succeeded," as she put it.

"If he has, I suppose I really ought to go over and look after him, hadn't I?" she asked of the matron. Mrs. Norris agreed that it was her duty.

Well, Tredway did have the measles; had all of them there was to be had, and when Miss Everdean arrived to take charge, his temperature was topping the hundred mark. But she covered him with blankets, packed him about with hot-water bottles, and eventually "drove them out." Then, when he awakened from his first untroubled sleep and was rational once more, she sat beside him and fed him scalded milk from a spoon.

"You're most beautifully speckled now," she said comfortingly. "One would almost think you had been caught out in a shower of red ink. But you're beginning to feel a lot better, aren't you? That's because the badness in you is being boiled out, as I tell the children.

Tredway swallowed a spoonful and smiled a little. Then he settled back for another nap. Afterward, as he lay, hour on hour, dozing and waking, waking and dozing in the semi-darkened room, the

fantastic thought recurred to him-Could there be anything in her fancy? Was this illness of his working some miraculous change in him?

Even after he was quite sure of the soundness of his mind the idea remained. Was he or was he not the same Hewitt Tredway that he had been a week before? He had a new view-point, anyway. He could see himself as he had been-selfcentred, cold, arrogant, tasting none of the simpler joys of life, but feeding his vanity on the vague prospects of future honors. How ridiculous it all seemed! Why, the thing to do was to laugh as you went, and to

pass the laugh along. This should be his philosophy. Did he get it, he wondered, from the words of a little ballad he had heard Rilla Everdean hum to a tripping tune? It was all about a "girl who was born on an April day," and whose rule of life was to "Cry when I must, but laugh while I may." He had heard it sung before, he remembered, and had sneered at the cheap sentiment. It seemed the most profound wisdom now. He wondered if Rilla Everdean was April born. Some day he would ask her. There were a lot of things he wanted to talk to her about. Why? Because it was the most natural