Mr. Vanderveer glowed all over with delight when father condemned the automobile as a nerve racker, and suggested that a young man of the companionable tutor order, who could either play games, fish, and drive with the boy and his chums, or at times leave him wholly alone, according to need, would be a good substitute for a woman who viewed life as a school of don’ts, and had either wholly outlived her youth, or else had most unpleasant recollections of it.

“I’ve got my innings at last,” he said.  “You’re the first doctor I’ve had who hasn’t sided with Maria and shut me out until pay day.”

“I wonder why spring is such a restless season,” I said half to myself and half to father, as I sat on the porch half an hour later, trying to focus my mind on writing to Lavinia Dorman, while father, lounging on the steps opposite, was busy reading his mail.

“One would think we might be content merely to throw off winter and look and enjoy, but no, every one is restless,—­birds, fourfoots, and humans.  Lavinia Dorman writes that Sylvia Latham has just started for California to see her brother, and she expects to bring her father back with her.  The boys disappeared mysteriously in the direction of Martha Corkle’s immediately after breakfast, Evan went reluctantly to the train, declaring that it seemed impossible to sit still long enough to reach the city, you are twisting about and shuffling your feet, looking far oftener at the river woods than at your letters, and as for myself, it seems as if I must go over yonder and seize Bertel’s spade and show him how to dig those seed beds more rapidly, so that I can begin to plant and kneel down and get close to the ground.  Yesterday when the boys came in with very earthy faces, and I questioned them, I found that they had stuck their precious noses in their mud pies, essaying to play mole and burrow literally.”

“It is the same mystery as the sweating of the corn,” replied father, gathering his letters in a heap and tossing them into a chair with a gesture of impatience; “none of us may escape, even though we do not understand it.

“It was years ago that I first heard the legend from an old farmer of the corn belt, who, longing for a sight of salt water, had drifted eastward into one of the little hill farms beyond the charcoal camp.  He had been bedridden nearly all winter, but uncomplainingly, his wife and daughter-in-law caring for him, and it was not until the early part of May, when all the world was growing green, that he began to mend and at the same time groan at his confinement.

“I tried to cheer him up, telling him that the worst was over, and that he soon would be about again, and he replied:  ‘’Tain’t me that’s doin’ of it, Doctor, hit’s the sweatin’ of the corn.  You know everywhere in May folks be plantin’ corn, the time bein’ the sign that frost is over and done with.’  I nodded assent, and he continued:  ’Now naterally there’s lots of corn in ear and shelled