ng his present power of abstracting his mind from surrounding
circumstances.

His income was a limited one, although it had been a good deal helped by
the products of his farm, and he had to do a great deal of calculating
with his pencil before he dared to order work which would oblige him to
draw a check with his pen. But by thus giving two dollars' worth of
thought to every dollar of expenditure, he made his money go a long way,
and the lively and personal interest he took in every little improvement,
made a garden fence to him of as much importance and satisfaction as a
new post-office would have been to the people of Thorbury.

One day he went into a hardware store of the town to buy some nails, and
there he met Miss Panney, who had just purchased a corkscrew.

"A thing you will not want for some time," she said, "for you do not look
as if you needed anything to cheer your soul. Now tell me, young man, is
it really the engagement rapture that has lasted all this time?"

"Oh, yes," said Ralph, laughing, "and besides that I have had all sorts
of good fortune. For instance, one of my hens, setting unbeknown to
anybody in a warm corner of the barn, has hatched out a dozen little
chicks. Think of that at this season! I have put them in a warm room, and
by the time we begin housekeeping we shall have spring chickens to eat
before anybody else. And then there is that black colt, Dom Pedro. I had
great doubts about him, because he showed such decided symptoms of free
will, but now he is behaving beautifully. He has become thoroughly
reconciled to a haycart. I have driven him in a light wagon with his
sister, and he is just as good as she is, and yesterday I drove him
single, and find that he has made up his mind to learn everything I can
teach him. Now isn't that a fine thing?"

"Oh, yes," said Miss Panney, "it must be such things as those that make
your eyes sparkle! But of course it warms your heart to give her delicate
eating when she first comes to you, and to have a fine pair of horses for
her to drive behind. If your face beams as it does now while she is
away, it will serve as an electric light when she comes back. Good
fortune! Oh, yes, of course, you consider that you have it in full
measure. But we are sometimes apt to look on our friends' good fortune in
an odd way. Now, if I had wanted you to go to Boston to get rich, and
instead of that you had insisted on going to Nantucket, and had become
rich there, I su