A Visitor From the Plain

"Papa," said Florence, next morning, as they two sat alone at breakfast, her mother having reported a headache and failed to appear, "let's go somewhere, away from folks, for a week or so."

"Why this sudden change of front?" her father queried. "Not being of the enemy I'm entitled to the plan of campaign, you know."

Florence observed him steadily, and the father could not but notice how much more mature she seemed than the prairie girl of a few months ago.

"There is no change of front or plan of campaign as far as I know," she replied. "I simply want to get away a bit, that's all." She returned to her neglected breakfast. "There's such a thing as mental dyspepsia, you know, and I feel a twinge of it now and then. I think this new life is being fed to me in doses too large for my digestion."

Mr. Baker eventually acquiesced, as anyone who knew him could have foretold he would do. His wife, also, when the plan was broached to her, hesitatingly agreed, but at the last moment balked and declined to go; so they left without her.

The small town to which they went had ample grass and trees, and a small lake convenient. A farmer's family reluctantly consented to board and lodge them; also to give them the use of a bony horse and a disreputable one-seated wagon. After their arrival they promptly proceeded to segregate themselves from their fellow-boarders. The first day they fished a little, talked, read, slept, meditated, and smoked--that is, Mr. Baker did, enough for two; and Florence assisted by rolling cigarettes when the bowl of the meerschaum grew uncomfortably hot. The next day they repeated the programme, and also the next, and the next.