but their harmony was to be one of the strong lessons of
her life. Lizzie was accustomed to ungrammatical language at home, but the
atmosphere of this house made ignorance of good form noticeable. She liked
Mr. Hornby, but she wondered a little about his association with his wife
and her home. She went with him to see the colt after breakfast and
remarked upon his neat barnyard in a manner which lifted the cloud upon
his face; he had had a feeling that he did not somehow come up to her
expectations.

The little colt nosed about his hand looking for food, and Nathan
laughed.

"It's just like th' human critter o' that age--wants t' try everything in
its mouth," he said, trying to find a topic of conversation.

Again Nathan Hornby caught a flicker of surprise in Lizzie Farnshaw's eye,
and again he was disconcerted.

"Wonder what I done t' set that child t' lookin' at me so funny?" he asked
himself as he went to the field later, and being big-hearted and ignorant
was unaware that a man could hamstring himself by an ungrammatical
phrase.

All day Susan Hornby read with the young girl and questioned her to get
into touch with her life and thought, and when night came was wildly
enthusiastic about her.

"Nate, she's worth a lift," she said to her husband after Lizzie had again
been tucked into bed. "Let's take her with us to Topeka this fall and put
her into the high school. She's--she's just the age our Katie would have
been. She says some teacher told her she was ready for the high school."

"Better wait till I'm elected, Sue," Nathan replied, and then, seeing
Susan's face cloud over with disappointment, added more cheerfully:

"Of course I don't care if you have the child, but you mustn't get to
countin' on this thing. That's th' trouble with these here fool politics:
they get folks t' countin' on things that can't come around."

Long after his wife was asleep, however, he mused upon the prospects of
going to Topeka, and for her sake he wanted to go. Nathan Hornby always
spoke of his chances of being elected to the legislature of his state
deprecatingly. He swaggered and pretended to be indifferent, but the worm
of desire burrowed deeper every time Topeka was mentioned. The very fact
that he was uneducated, and, as the Democrats had said, unfit, made him
desire it the more. Criticism had aroused the spirit of contest in him.
Also he wanted Susan, now that she had begun to plan for it, to have it.
Nathan Hornby kn