a
deacon that did not suffer from some complaint that whiskey
would ease; and I'll get into what clean clothes I have and
go to look for him.'

"So I bought the dinner. I was willing enough to suffer the
emptiness to come, if only I could wipe from my father's
memory his impression of my man's poverty; but all the
same, in case he should refuse to visit us, I bought things
that would last long enough to serve ourselves until the
thirty shillings should have been earned. They made a good
show: for I have never been a fool in the matter of food,
and I knew my father's tastes. I promised myself that his
dinner should be his chief memory of that day, at all
events. He was, I fear, the kind of man who remembers his
good dinners better than anything else.

"It was a long time before they came, and I had given up
all hope of the visit when I heard their voices. Or rather,
it was Kornel's voice that I heard, in a tone of careless
civility, like one who performs a casual duty of
politeness. He was talking nonsense in a slow drawl, and as
they picked their way from the road to the house my father
looked up to him in a kind of wonder.

"'The evenings are pleasant here,' Kornel was saying. 'We
have a little time to ourselves then, for people have
learned at last not to trouble us much. One sees the sun go
down yonder across the hills, and it is very pretty, Now,
on the farm, nobody ever knew how handsome the sunset is.
We were like Kafirs on the farm; but life in the town is
quite different.'

"He chattered on in the same strain, and my father was
plainly dazed by it, so that his judgment was all fogged,
and he took the words at their face value. I noticed that
my father seemed a little abashed and doubtful; it was easy
to see that this was the opposite of what he had expected.

"He greeted me with a touch of hesitation in his manner;
but I kissed him on the forehead and tried to appear a
fortunate daughter--smiling assuredly, you know, glad to
exercise hospitality and to receive my father in my own
house. It was not all seeming, either; for I had no shame
in my condition and my husband's fortune,--only a resentment
for those who affected to expect it.

"'You are looking well,' said my father, staring at me.
'How do you like the life you are living?'

"Kornel smiled boldly across to me, and I laughed.

"'I was never so happy in my life,' I answered--and that, at
any rate, was true.

"My father grunted, and sat lis