The sunlight of a golden October afternoon poured down on a little brick terrace running along one side of the farmhouse in the Berkshires Harry had bought and reformed into a summer house. It was not the principal open-air extension of the place; the official verandah was on the other side, commanding a wide view to the east and south. This was just a little private terrace, designed especially for use on afternoons like the present, when for the moment autumn went back on all its promises and in a moment of carelessness poured over a dying landscape the breath of May. The only view to be had from it was up a grassy slope to the west, on the summit of which, according to all standards except those of the New England farmer of one hundred years ago, the house ought to have been built. Not that either Madge or Harry cared particularly. They were fond of pointing out that Tom Ball, or West Stockbridge Mountain, or whatever it was, shut out the view to the west anyway, and that they were lucky enough to find a farmhouse with any view from it at all.
On the terrace sat James and Beatrice, who were spending a week-end with their relatives. Madge was with them. Presumably there was current in her mind a polite fiction that she was entertaining her guests, but she did not take her duties of hostess-ship too seriously. It was not even necessary to keep up a conversation; they all got along far too well together for that. They simply sat and enjoyed the fleeting sunshine, making pleasant and unnecessary remarks whenever they felt moved to do so. Probably they also thought, from time to time. Of the general extraordinariness of things, and so forth. If they all spent a little time in admiring the adroitness with which the hands of fate had shuffled them, with the absent member of the pack, into their present satisfactory positions, we should not be at all surprised. But of course none of them made any allusion to it.
Harry suddenly burst through the glass door leading from the house and flopped into a chair. His appearance was informal. The others turned toward him with curious nostrils.
"I know, I know," he sighed. "The only thing is for us all to smoke. You too, Beatrice. Because if you don't you'll smell me, and if you smell me I'll have to go up and wash, and if I go up and wash now I shall miss this last hour of sunshine and that will make you all very, very unhappy."
"I am smoking," said Beatrice calmly, "because I want to, and for no other reason."
"And I," observed Madge, "because Harry doesn't want me to."
"If you want to know what I've been doing since lunch," said Harry, disregarding the insult, "I don't mind telling you that I've mended a wire fence, covered the asparagus bed, conducted several successful bonfires and filled all the grease-cups on the Ford. I have also turned—"
"Yes," said James, "we've guessed that."
"And now only a few trifles such as feeding fowls and swine—or as Madge prefers to put it, chickabiddies and piggywigs—stand between me and a well-deserved repose. Heavens! I don't see how farmers can keep such late hours. Harker, I believe, frequently stays up till nearly nine. I feel as if it ought to be midnight now; nothing but the thought of the piggywigs keeps me out of bed."
"Can't Harker feed the piggywigs?" inquired Beatrice.