The Newtown bee. (Newtown, Conn.) 1877-current, 1901-11-01

some and sweet and practical, she al
ways reminds me of freshIy-baked
loaf of bread.''
She stood frowning now at the new
conner, suspecting another queer piece
of hospitality on the part of her broth
er, who was apt to forget that they had
come here for summers rest and
quiet. "Have you actually invited
reproachfully, where he sat on the
cabin piazza with his wife, examining
butterfly through a microscope. The
professor never relinquished this micro
scope. 1t lay beside his plate at meals,
and it was even affirmed that he slept
with it under his pillow.
He looked up in rather shame-faced
surprise. "Just old Hi]debrandt, he
owned. "You remember him, Marian?
l happened upon him when was back
in town last week, half-harassed to
death with business, so I asked him out
for couple of weeks. Fancy he told
me he had never spent week in the
woods in his life!"
The professor paused to muse over
such an incOnceivable state OF affairs.
Life to him was delightful period,
far too painfully brief to allow of his
studying all the wonderful things he
would like to study among plants and
animals. He was destitute of any
point of view which would have en-
abled him to understand a mans de-
voting his life to commercial pursuits.
He gloried in this wild patch of noun
tainside, and loved and cherished it,
friends to share his joy as millionaire
might invite them to his palace home.
Hildebrandt was their tenth guest
that summer.
II don't ask if he's young or old,
Frederick said Elizabeth, firmly.
"And don't care whether he's black
or white, but what I do insist upon
knowing is-can he wash dishes?"
"I'll ask him, my DEAR" said the
professor, going to meet his guest, with
hasty kiss flung to his wife. 1t was
always the professors sister, and not
his wife, who asked for explanations,
all that he did being perfect in his
wife's eyes.
So Hildebrandt arrived and was duly
installed in the guest-tent further
down the mOuntain-side, which Eliza
beth called the professors ''fresh-air
hospital In course of time he was
presented and breakfasted with them
on the cabin piazza, with the blue
mountain peaks over the way and the
sun creeping in here and there among
the fern. Elizabeth was friendly and
cheerful and began to hope they might
not find the man such bother after
all. Hildebrandt fell hopelessly and
irretrevably in love with Elizabeth
from the first moment he beheld her,
and wOrshiped at her feet all breakfast
time. The lovers intense sense of the
uniquenesS of one woman possessed
him, heart and soul. She was like
nobody else in the world and she was
the one woman for him. He accepted
his love for her, blindly and without
reason, as one more inevitable fact in
his earthly fate, and knew that if the
opportunity should come to do her a
deed Of service scores of years hence he
would do it then as humbly and gladly
as now, knowing neither why nor
wherefore.
Unluckily for Hildebrandt's dreams,
Elizabeth and Mrs Townsend departed
for the top of the mountain immedi-
ately after breakfast with sketch
books and field glasses, and were seen
no more till evening. 1t appeared it
was the professors day for washing
the dishes.
"1t's a deplorable nuisance,' said
the professor, who frankly loathed the
,, task like anybody else. "Would you
mind polishing them for me, old fell
lOW?'
"Not at ALL said IIildebrandt, I'M
truthfully.
His reward came when the professor
handed him the leaf-bOrdered plate he
had noticed was Elizabeth's. Perhaps
he would have transmitted it into pure
gold if he could. AS it was, he polish
ed it till it shone, that she might dine