Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/234

 You've driven all the servants from the farm, so you must turn in and help yourself."

"How jolly!" she said. "I come this instant moment. I'll kill those turkeys surely."

"Don't feed the hens too much," he admonished, as they walked back to the barn. "The last time you fed them, they were all but crop bound with corn."

"I will make them drunk on silage," she said, gaily, "and I will teach them to sing a song of joy because Phœbe is gone. Oh, she is a bad one, that Phœbe. I peeped in her box as it stood on the back porch, and, what do you s'pose? She had taken two of the blue and gold cups and saucers—one apiece for them."

"I hope you took them out."

"I did, Durek. And I put in their place a sticky tin pie plate that she wouldn't scrape clean yesterday."

"Fawnie," said Derek, taking her hand. "I say it in all solemnity, you are more than a match for anyone I know."

The stock had been fed and bedded for the night; the poultry safely housed; the milk separated and set away to cool; old Peek was gone; and Derek stood leaning against a pillar of the porch, while his wife prepared the tea. He gazed at the quiet lake, at the pale star of the lighthouse just winking out against the sombre red of the sky. He saw the little gnarled trees on the bluff twisted into fantastic postures—the sport of Grimstone. And here was he who had come to Grimstone with a grand gesture of possession—its sport, too—bent to its will—his Indian wife cooking in the kitchen—his Indian son kicking on the bed. . . . His son was beginning to cry, as well as kick. "Coming, Buckskin!" he shouted, and went to him.

Fawnie was surprisingly competent in the affairs of the