COMMUTER'S WIFE 13 



with the idea that all outdoors belonged to her. By 

 the way, did you ever know that the Marquis was 

 really a country doctor, and that Puss was a female 

 child? 



It was from father's shoulder that I peered into 

 my first woodpecker's hole, receiving a sharp reproof 

 in the nose from the bill of the irate owner. Who 

 could compare printed thoughts to those long drives 

 through the woods to the charcoal-burner's camp, the 

 horseback rides single file along the river path to the 

 sawmill, where a lumberman seemed always to be ill 

 of ague from the dankness of the mill pond? Or 

 the jolting trips in a buckboard over the corduroy 

 road across the marshes to the bar, where the light- 

 house boat waited for us, or yet the tramps in pursuit 

 of plover and woodcock through the bottom lands ? 

 Do not be shocked, kind ladies of the Audubon 

 Society ; we obeyed the game laws, the birds always 

 went to the sick, and I knew no better ; also father 

 was quite proud of me when I shot an old crow on 

 the wing. If you try it, you will understand why ! 



Then again I would stay for days in my garden, 

 grubbing in the few ragged borders that the vegeta- 

 ble greed of the man of all work and Aunt Lot's 



