to do it, too. Don't think I ain't. Still, I can't help knowin' there's better ways to go at it than blunderin' along as I have to, an' sometimes I can't help wishin' I knew what the right way is. There must be folks that know how to do in half the time what I do by makeshift an' fussin'. Sometimes it seems a pity there never was anybody to steer me into findin' out the kind of things I've always wanted to know." 

 Celestina began to rock nervously. 

 Being of New England fiber, and classing as morbid all forms of introspection, she always so dreaded to have the conversation drift into a reflective channel that whenever she found Willie indulging in reveries she was wont to rout him out of them, tartly reproaching herself for having even indirectly been the cause of stirrin' him up. 

 "Next time I'll set the chowder back on the stove an' say nothin'," she would vow inwardly.  "I'd much better have waited 'til his dream was over an' done with. S'pose I am put out a bit—'twon't hurt me. If I don't care enough for Willie to do somethin' for him once in a while, good as he's always been to me, I'd oughter be ashamed of myself." 

 Hence it is easily seen that neither to Wilton in general nor to Celestina in particular was Willie Spence a trial. 

 No, it was to himself that Willie was the torment.  "I plague myself 'most to death, Tiny," he would not infrequently confess when the two sat together at dusk in the little room that looked out on the reach of blue sea.  "It's gettin' all these idees that drives me distracted. 'Tain't that I go huntin' 'em; they come to me, hittin' me broadside like as if they'd been shot out of a gun. There's times," ambled on the quiet voice, "when they'll wake me out of a sound sleep an' give me no peace 'til I've got up and 'tended to 'em. That notion of hitchin' a string to the slide in the stove door so'st you could open the draught without stirrin' out of your chair—that took me in the night. There warn't no waitin' 'til mornin'! Long ago I learned that. Once the idee has a-holt of me there's nothin' to do but haul myself out of bed, even if it's midnight an' colder'n the devil, an' try out that notion." 

 "The plan was a good one; it's saved lots of steps," put in Celestina. 

 "It had to be done, Tiny," Willie answered simply.  "That's all there was to it. Good or bad, I had to carry it to a finish if I didn't sleep another wink that night." 

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