After dinner they went out to the veranda and the gentlemen smoked. The

judge set his chair down on the ground, tilted back in it with his feet on

the steps, and blew a wavery domed city up in the air. He called it solid

comfort. He liked to sit out from under the porch roof, he said; he wanted

to see more of the sky. The others moved their chairs down to join him in

the celestial vision. There had blown across the heaven a feathery, thin

cloud or two, but save for these, there was nothing but glorious and

tender, brilliant blue. It seemed so clear and close one marvelled the

little church spire in the distance did not pierce it; yet, at the same

time, the eye ascended miles and miles into warm, shimmering ether. Far

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away two buzzards swung slowly at anchor, half-way to the sun.

"'O bright, translucent, cerulean hue,

Let my wide wings drift on in you,'"

said Harkless, pointing them out to Helen.

"You seem to get a good deal of fun out of this kind of weather," observed

Lige, as he wiped his brow and shifted his chair out of the sun.

"I expect you don't get such skies as this up in Rouen," said the judge,

looking at the girl from between half-closed eyelids.

"It's the same Indiana sky, I think," she answered.

"I guess maybe in the city you don't see as much of it, or think as much

about it. Yes, they're the Indiana skies," the old man went on.

Skies as blue

As the eyes of children when they smile at you.'

"There aren't any others anywhere that ever seemed much like them to me.

They've been company for me all my life. I don't think there are any

others half as beautiful, and I know there aren't any as sociable. They

were always so." He sighed gently, and Miss Sherwood fancied his wife must

have found the Indiana skies as lovely as he had, in the days of long ago.

"Seems to me they are the softest and bluest and kindest in the world."

"I think they are," said Helen, "and they are more beautiful than the

'Italian skies,' though I doubt if many of us Hoosiers realize it; and--

certainly no one else does."

The old man leaned over and patted her hand. Harkless gasped. "'Us

Hoosiers!'" chuckled the judge. "You're a great Hoosier, young lady! How

much of your life have you spent in the State? 'Us Hoosiers!'"




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