t rebuff and knowledge of the world was of another sort. He
was again walking the road at twilight, when he was overtaken by a wagon
with one seat, upon which were two pretty girls, and a young gentleman
sat between them, driving. It was a merry party, and John could hear
them laughing and singing as they approached him. The wagon stopped when
it overtook him, and one of the sweet-faced girls leaned from the seat
and said, quite seriously and pleasantly:

"Little boy, how's your mar?"

John was surprised and puzzled for a moment. He had never seen the young
lady, but he thought that she perhaps knew his mother; at any rate, his
instinct of politeness made him say:

"She's pretty well, I thank you."

"Does she know you are out?"

And thereupon all three in the wagon burst into a roar of laughter, and
dashed on.

It flashed upon John in a moment that he had been imposed on, and it
hurt him dreadfully. His self-respect was injured somehow, and he felt
as if his lovely, gentle mother had been insulted. He would like to have
thrown a stone at the wagon, and in a rage he cried:

"You're a nice...." but he could n't think of any hard, bitter words
quick enough.

Probably the young lady, who might have been almost any young lady,
never knew what a cruel thing she had done.

XI. HOME INVENTIONS

The winter season is not all sliding downhill for the farmer-boy, by any
means; yet he contrives to get as much fun out of it as from any part of
the year. There is a difference in boys: some are always jolly, and some
go scowling always through life as if they had a stone-bruise on each
heel. I like a jolly boy.

I used to know one who came round every morning to sell molasses candy,
offering two sticks for a cent apiece; it was worth fifty cents a day to
see his cheery face. That boy rose in the world. He is now the owner of
a large town at the West. To be sure, there are no houses in it except
his own; but there is a map of it, and roads and streets are laid out
on it, with dwellings and churches and academies and a college and
an opera-house, and you could scarcely tell it from Springfield or
Hartford,--on paper. He and all his family have the fever and ague,
and shake worse than the people at Lebanon; but they do not mind it; it
makes them lively, in fact. Ed May is just as jolly as he used to be.
He calls his town Mayopolis, and expects to be mayor of it; his wife,
however, calls the town Maybe.

The farmer-bo