d not come, but he
got a letter which said that one of her friends wanted her to stay two
weeks with her, until after the Fourth of July.

"She's an awful nice girl, and we will have a grand time; she has a
rich father and a piano and a pony and a buggy. It will just be grand."

"I don't blame her none," sighed Anson to Bert. "I don't want her to
come away while she's enjoyin' herself. It'll be a big change for her
to come back an' cook f'r us old mossbacks after bein' at school an' in
good company all these months."

He was plainly disturbed. Her vacation was going to be all too short at
the best, and he was so hungry for the sight of her! Still, he could
not blame her for staying, under the circumstances; as he told Bert,
his feelings did not count. He just wanted her to got all she could out
of life; "there ain't much, anyway, for us poor devils; but what little
there is we want her to have."

The Fourth of July was the limit of her stay, and on the sixth,
seventh, and eighth Anson drove regularly to the evening train to meet
her.

On the third day another letter came, saying that she would reach home
the next Monday. With this Anson rode home in triumph. During the next
few days he went to the barber's and had his great beard shaved off.
"Made me look so old," he explained, seeing Bert's wild start of
surprise. "I've be'n carryin' that mop o' hair round so long I'd kind
o' got into the notion o' bein' old myself. Got a kind o' crick in the
back, y' know. But I ain't; I ain't ten years older'n you be."

And he was not. His long blond moustache, shaved beard, and clipped
hair made a new man of him, and a very handsome man, too, in a large
way. He was curiously embarrassed by Bert's prolonged scrutiny, and
said jocosely:

"We've got to brace up a little now. Company boarders comin', young
lady from St. Peter's Seminary, city airs an' all that sort o' thing.
Don't you let me see you eatin' pie with y'r knife. I'll break the
shins of any man that feeds himself with anythin' 'cept the
silver-plated forks I've bought."

Flaxen had been gone almost a year, and a year counts for much at her
age. Besides, Anson had exaggerated ideas of the amount of learning she
could absorb in a year at a boarding-seminary, and he had also a very
vague idea of what "society" was in St. Peter, although he seemed
suddenly to awake to the necessity of "bracing up" a little and getting
things generally into shape. He bought a new suit