and go barefoot--e--couldn't go
barefoot, Cynthy?"

"Oh, no," said Cynthia, laughing again at his sober face.

"C-couldn't dig up the Common and plant flowers--could you?"

"Of course you couldn't."

"P-plant 'em out there?" asked Jethro.

"Oh, yes," cried Cynthia; "I'll show you." She hesitated a moment, and
then thrust her hand into his. "Do you want to see?"

"Guess I do," said he, energetically, and she led him into the garden,
pointing out with pride the rows of sweet peas and pansies, which she had
made herself. Impelled by a strange curiosity, William Wetherell went to
the door and watched them. There was a look on the face of Jethro Bass
that was new to it as he listened to the child talk of the wondrous
things around them that summer's day,--the flowers and the bees and the
brook (they must go down and stand on the brink of it), and the songs of
the vireo and the hermit thrush.

"Hain't lonely here, Cynthy--hain't lonely here?" he said.

"Not in the country," said Cynthia. Suddenly she lifted her eyes to his
with a questioning look. "Are you lonely, sometimes?"

He did not answer at once.

"Not with you, Cynthy--not with you."

By all of which it will be seen that the acquaintance was progressing.
They sat down for a while on the old millstone that formed the step, and
there discussed Cynthia's tastes. She was too old for dolls, Jethro
supposed. Yes, Cynthia was too old for dolls. She did not say so, but the
only doll she had ever owned had become insipid when the delight of such
a reality as taking care of a helpless father had been thrust upon her.
Books, suggested Jethro. Books she had known from her earliest infancy:
they had been piled around that bedroom over the roof. Books and book
lore and the command of the English tongue were William Wetherell's only
legacies to his daughter, and many an evening that spring she had read
him to sleep from classic volumes of prose and poetry I hesitate to name,
for fear you will think her precocious. They went across the green to
Cousin Ephraim Prescott's harness shop, where Jethro had tied his horse,
and it was settled that Cynthia liked books.

On the morning following this extraordinary conversation, Jethro Bass and
his wife departed for the state capital. Listy was bedecked in amazing
greens and yellows, and Jethro drove, looking neither to the right nor
left, his coat tails hanging down behind the seat, the reins lying slack
across the plump quarter