tributing more than $500,000 a year to the cause for which our nation has entered the war. No salaries are paid by the American Railway Association to any officers serving on subcommittees of the War Board.

IX

THE plan of operation, worked out in this country, is somewhat like but largely unlike that adopted in England with respect to her railways at the outset of the war. In each country the determination of policy and practice of operation, of the national railway system during the war has been intrusted to a small committee of the men who were in charge of some of the principal railroads prior to war conditions, but without any disturbance of local management. In England, however, the government assumed financial responsibility and guaranteed that net earnings of the companies would continue to be what they had been before the war started.

In this country the plan is that the government shall advise the railroads what service it requires, and the responsibility is upon the railroad-managers to provide that service. When working to

that end the railroads are operated practically as one system.

Like the English plan, the American plan places responsibility upon experienced railroad officers for producing results, but under the American plan the government's only function is to determine what its requirements are, and to pay for what service it gets like any private citizen. It is the belief of railroad-managers that this will work not only for efficiency of service but for economy in operation as well.

At all events, the American railroads are keenly appreciative of their opportunity to demonstrate to the country the value in time of war of operating railroads with that elasticity which private management makes possible.

I venture to predict that the railroads of the United States during the period of the war will rise to the highest state of efficiency that the art has ever known. They will make this great advance through the co-operative work of their employees, of shippers and consignees of freight, of passengers, and of Federal and State regulative bodies. Indeed, such a prediction can only be fulfilled through this co-operation, to secure which is part of the railroads' war problem.

At this indecent effrontery Mr. Merryweather's anger passed all bounds.-Page 377.

I

UTUMN arrived cloaked in dismal, dripping days. I had to stop in the house a week with a wretched cold. It is strange how, when one is shut off from the world, even for seven days, one gets the feeling that almost anything may have happened. I was sure the village had been swept away by a cloudburst, and as for Dr. Brooke-goodness only knew what might have happened to him during the interval!

A sunny Sunday afternoon having appeared suddenly out of the grayest of days I hastened down to the village. Just beyond the post-office I met Mrs. O'Herron. Something important was on hand; I could see that by her unusually neat appearance. She was actually endimanchée, with a hat that was evidently meant to impress and did. It was the first time I had ever seen her outside the sheltering walls of the grocery and freed from the rather disfiguring folds of a checked apron. The change was quite disconcerting. I had thought of her as old, colorless, with no accomplishments beyond selling tins of tomatoes. I was entirely wrong. She is not old at all; indeed, out of the grocery she looked flippantly young to be the mother of three children.

She shot a glance of inspection at me, said frankly that I looked like a ghost, and asked what was the matter with me. At heart Mrs. O'Herron is sympathetic; one has only to get beyond her uncompromising directness to realize it.

.

doing well to be getting on to some one else. 'Tis I would be the last person in the world to know what's going on."

"Yet," I gave her an appreciative glance, "here you are, out for a Sunday promenade and wearing a most fetching new bonnet. Surely something's up!"

She softened and let her nice, Irishblue eyes smile at me. "Bless you,' 'tis visiting I do be going. I'm calling on Mrs. Merryweather."

"Mrs. Merryweather! I don't know her."

"Of course you don't. Herself and her husband are by way of just arriving in the village. They are stopping on for several months-perhaps six-perhaps a year, who knows? Himself is selling a book, has the agency for the State, and is going to make this his headquarters." Then, with a touch of civic pride: "I'm always believing to give every one that's new to the town a welcome. Besides, who knows but himself is one of those smart Alecs that do think they can buy groceries cheaper from a catalogue house than from myself, then?"

"If he sees that hat he will be sure of it."

She snubbed my compliment and went on, meditatively: "Sure and I'm not certain that I do be liking him myself." He was pompous, that's what he was; with all sorts of notions about minding other people's business. She saw that the first time herself had laid eyes on him. And his wife Mrs. Merryweather? Bless you, she didn't count!

"And the book-what is it?" ""The Family Tie-in ten volumes. Monthly instalments or ten per cent off for money down."

"I suppose you were Mr. Merryweather's first customer?"

"Indeed, and I was not. What use would I be having with 'The Family Tie,'

myself ten years married, with three children and a bedridden husband!"

Passing Dr. Brooke's gate and seeing him coming down the walk, we stopped and waited for him. He also was in Sunday attire. Having just been shaved, he looked quite tidy and a bit conscious; this latter due, I think, to the generous amount of powder and scent contributed by the negro barber.

Mrs. O'Herron nodded with approbation. "Tis my heart it does good to see yourself out for a Sunday walk."

He smiled and let his adoring glance rest on her. She went on: "I'm thinking 'twould be good of yourself and himself to go visiting with me this afternoon." I am always yourself or himself to Mrs. O'Herron. I believe she keeps my account for groceries under such a pseudonym.

The conversation ended with both of us going with her to extend a welcome to the Merryweathers. They were sitting on the front porch of the little house they had My first impression was that Mrs. O'Herron was quite correct in her appreciation of them. Mr. Merryweather was pompous. Pompous in figure, pompous in face, pompous in words; a bromidic sort of egoist who liked resounding words whether they meant anything or no. I suppose such qualities are necessary for some professions; there is no doubt that pomposity has its impressive side. As for Mrs. Merryweather! Again Mrs. O'Herron was right. She didn't count. She was small in a comprehensive way; in figure, in features, and in voice; a person one would never remember having seen; in every way colorless, without any decided place in life, without any object, without even any desires. At least this is what I thought when I first saw her.

"And what be you thinking of her?" whispered Mrs. O'Herron when Mrs. Merryweather had gone into the house in search of refreshment for us.

"I don't; do you?"

She chuckled, shook her head, and assumed a remarkably successful pose of strict attention to Mr. Merryweather's oration on the beauties of the village. Of course, she wasn't listening at all; she was estimating, I could swear it, how

much the Merryweathers would purchase a week. "Not much," said the drooping angle of her hat.

Mrs. Merryweather returned and dispensed hospitality in the form of homemade wine and chocolate layer cake. Our visit went on interminably. Mrs. Merryweather said nothing; indeed, none of us had a chance to. Mr. Merryweather, accustomed to being listened to, never realized that any one else might have something to say. Dr. Brooke was fidgety to smoke; so was I; but we both instinctively and silently agreed that Mrs. Merryweather wouldn't be able to stand it; and of course Mr. Merryweather was just the type that never had smoked. Nothing I can think of expresses him so perfectly.

We pretended to listen to him; though none of us did. Now and then I managed to get some amusement out of the situation when I found that Mrs. Merryweather's timid eyes were riveted on one of Dr. Brooke's white socks which had a goodly-sized hole in it. I suppose it was her housewifely instinct asserting itself. He, unconscious of the tragedy, kept crossing that leg more conspicuously than the other.

When we rose to leave, Dr. Brooke shook hands with Mrs. Merryweather, and lingered just long enough over the process to give the poor little soul his warming glance. The faintest pink crept into her faded cheeks. This was followed quickly by a troubled, half-frightened light in her lustreless eyes; then her hand went out and touched her husband's arm. It was an unconscious gesture of dependence at finding herself in an unfamiliar and to her, no doubt, illicit situation.

When my turn came to shake hands with her I saw her eyes furtively following Dr. Brooke. Illicit or not, his glance had found her, as it did practically every other woman, vulnerable. Then, as we stood a moment on the steps, her eyes met his and this time the faded pink deepened, and -yes, I swear it-her lips trembled into a smile that was almost warm. It only lasted a bare second, yet nothing could have told more eloquently that she was seeing for the first time what she had always hoped for and never found—a look of admiration, perhaps even adoration.

Mr. Merryweather was incapable of bestowing such a glance; Dr. Brooke was incapable of withholding it.

"Why do women marry men like that!" I commented, when we were at a safe distance.

"And why is it that men do marry women like that?" Mrs. O'Herron retorted.

"She's a very sweet little woman," Dr. Brooke said, in his thoughtful, thoroughly impersonal tone.

"Sweet!" scoffed Mrs. O'Herron. ""Tis yourself would be calling sweet anything in a petticoat! And sure, what's to be got out of being sweet if all you get for it is a browbeating?"

"Surely, Mrs. O'Herron," I exclaimed, "you don't mean to insinuate that a man that talks as Mr. Merryweather did would treat his wife unkindly!"

She scoffed at my masculine lack of insight. "Tis as plain as the nose on your face. 'Tis written all over her. Bless you, what else would it be that makes her so mushy-like!"

"I wonder !" said Dr. Brooke, absently pulling at his stubby mustache. "And she such a sweet little woman!"

II

AGAIN the dismal, dripping days set in; my cold returned, accompanied this time with racking pains and fever. In desperation I took to my bed and sent for Dr. Brooke. His medicine was worse than the illness, an awful dose, black as night, which I managed to swallow only after calling in the aid of my cook. She held me with two shining, muscular arms and forced three tablespoonfuls down my throat. The directions called for only one, but she insisted that if one was going to do me good three would do that much more good. "You want to kill me," I protested. "I want to make a man of you,' she stated, with such finality that I opened my mouth without a murmur.

At the end of a fortnight Dr. Brooke said I was much better, even if I wouldn't admit it. Another week in bed would put me on my feet again.

"Another week!" I exclaimed. "You aren't going to keep me here that long! I'll die of bed-sickness!"

He pushed up a chair, sat down, and reached for my hand. His are large and strong and strangely soft. I should never have thought they were soft; they didn't look so. They were not badly made; one might almost call them finely made, with long fingers, squarely cut nails-I'm sure he trimmed them with his pocket-knife— and with an expression of sensitiveness across the knuckles that contrasted abruptly with his hairy, sensual wrists. As he grasped my hand firmly, yet never so gently, I felt a comforting warmth and vitality pass through me. It was the sensation of being in touch with a hot, throbbing fountain of life. The flickering light from the wood fire fell on him and lighted up the brown of his eyes, of his hair, of his mustache, and glowed upon his weather-tanned skin. The dim light was becoming to him; for the first time I realized that there was something very handsome about him and a warmth that reached to one's soul and cheered it.

"I'd almost forgotten," he began after a long silence, a charming glow of humor lurking in his eyes and in his slow smile. "Mrs. Merryweather asked me to find out. if you'd let her come and sit with you some afternoon.”

"Heavens-no!" I exclaimed. "That would be the last straw."

He laughed quietly. "She said she knew all about nursing and she would so like to come up here and do something for you."

"I'm too ill to be nursed-by her." He tugged at his mustache. "I think you'll have to let her come once." "I don't see why."

"Well, you see, because she's so insistent."

"Mrs. Merryweather insistent! I don't believe a word of it. She hasn't enough spunk to be."

He went on laughing, as if to himself. "She has asked me four times to see if you would let her come."

"Four times! You must be seeing a lot of her." I said this with frank insinuation. He did not miss it, looked away in his abashed, schoolboy fashion, and hastened to give me a detailed account of each meeting: once at Mrs. O'Herron's grocery when he had happened to mention my illness; again at church