something natively fine and chivalrous in his admiration. She felt
that.

"You're a farmer's daughter yourself," said Deering, as if they had
been speaking of somebody else who was.

"Yes, my father was a farmer. I'm a teacher. I only began a little
while ago to speak in the interest of the farmer. It seems to me that
everybody is looking out for himself except the farmer, and I want to
help him to help himself. I expect to speak in every county in the
State this winter."

Bradley crept nearer. He was eager to hear what she was saying. He grew
furtive in his manner, when she observed him, and he felt as if he were
doing something criminal. He saw Miss Wilbur say something to Mr.
Deering, who looked up a moment later and said to Bradley, whom he did
not know, "Why, certainly, come and have some dinner, plenty of it."

Bradley flushed hot with shame and indignation, and moved away deeply
humiliated. They had taken him for a poor, friendless, lonely tramp,
and there was just enough truth in his loneliness to make it sting.

"Say, Brad, don't you want some grub?" called Councill, catching sight
of him.

"Quick, 'r'y lose it," said Burns.

He sat down and fell upon the dinner silently, but there was a hot
flush still upon his face. He was not a beau. It had always been
difficult for him to address a marriageable woman, and a joke on that
subject threw him into dumb confusion. He had lived a dozen tender
dreams of which no one knew a word. Indeed, he never acknowledged them
to himself. He had admired in this way Eileen Deering whom he had seen
with Milton a few times during the year. He now envied Milton his easy
air of calm self-possession in the presence of two such beautiful
girls. There was a bitter feeling of rebellion in his heart.

Miss Wilbur had stirred his unexplored self. Down where ambitions are
born; where aspirations rise like sun-shot mists, her words and the
light of her face had gone. Already there was something sacred and
ineffably sweet about her voice and face. She had come to him as the
right woman comes sometimes to a man, and thereafter his whole life is
changed.

He walked away from the few people he knew, and tried to interest
himself in the games they were playing but he could not. He drifted
back to the grand stand and sought about till he could see Miss Wilbur
once more. She was so pure, so beautiful to him.

The hour or two after dinner was spent in visiting and getting
acquainted, a