she had not stopped to talk with him at the palings.
The girls, indeed, were giggling as the carryall passed, and she heard
somebody call out his name, but nevertheless he leaned out of the seat
and waved his hat at her, amid a shout of laughter. Poor Cynthia! She
did not look at him. Tears of vexation were in her eyes, and the light
of her joy at this visit to the capital flickered, and she wished she
were back in Coniston. She thought it would be very nice to be rich, and
to live in a great house in a city, and to go on picnics.

The light flickered, but it did not wholly go out. If it has not been
shown that Cynthia was endowed with a fair amount of sense, many of
these pages have been written in vain. She sat down for a while in the
park and thought of the many things she had to be thankful for--not the
least of which was Jethro's kindness. And she remembered that she was to
see "Uncle Tom's Cabin" that evening.

Such are the joys and sorrows of fifteen!

CHAPTER XV

Mr. Amos Cuthbert named it so--our old friend Amos who lives high up in
the ether of Town's End ridge, and who now represents Coniston in the
Legislature. He is the same silent, sallow person as when Jethro first
took a mortgage on his farm, only his skin is beginning to resemble
dried parchment, and he is a trifle more cantankerous. On the morning of
that memorable day when, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" came to the capital, Amos
had entered the Throne Room and given vent to his feelings in regard to
the gentleman in the back seat who had demanded an evening sitting on
behalf of the farmers.

"Don't that beat all?" cried Amos. "Let them have their darned
woodchuck session; there won't nobody go to it. For cussed, crisscross
contrariness, give me a moss-back Democrat from a one-boss, one-man town
like Suffolk. I'm a-goin' to see the show."

"G-goin' to the show, be you, Amos?" said Jethro.

"Yes, I be," answered Amos, bitterly. "I hain't agoin' nigh the house
to-night." And with this declaration he departed.

"I wonder if he really is going?" queried Mr. Merrill looking at the
ceiling. And then he laughed.

"Why shouldn't he go?" asked William Wetherell.

Mr. Merrill's answer to this question was a wink, whereupon he, too,
departed. And while Wetherell was pondering over the possible meaning of
these words the Honorable Alva Hopkins entered, wreathed in smiles, and
closed the door behind him.

"It's all fixed," he said, taking a seat near Jeth