affairs, and me. This plunged me into the depths of misery.

So, when I furnished the cream for the donation picnic at Crabapple
Grove in strawberry time, I went prepared to see myself discarded by my
love. She was there, and I had not overestimated her coldness toward
me. Buck Gowdy came for only a few minutes, and these he spent eating
ice-cream with Elder Thorndyke, with Virginia across the table from him,
looking at her in that old way of his. Before he left, she went over and
sat with Bob Wade and Kittie Fleming; but he joined them pretty soon,
and I saw him bending down in that intimate way of his, first speaking
to Kittie, and then for a longer time, to Virginia--and I thought of the
time when she would not even speak his name!

Once she walked off by herself in the trees, and looked back at me as
she went; but I was done with her, I said to myself, and hung back. She
soon returned to the company, and began flirting with Matthias Trickey,
who was no older than I, and just as much of a country bumpkin. I found
out afterward that right off after that, Matthias began going to see
her, with his pockets full of candy with mottoes on it. I called this
sparking, and the sun of my hopes set in a black bank of clouds. I do
not remember that I was ever so unhappy, not even when John Rucker was
in power over me and my mother, not even when I was seeking my mother up
and down the canal and the Lakes, not even when I found that she had
gone away on her last long journey that bleak winter day in Madison. I
now devoted myself to the memory of my old dreams for my mother, and
blamed myself for treason to her memory, getting out that old letter and
the poor work-worn shoe, and weeping over them in my lonely nights in
the cabin on the prairie. I can not now think of this without pity for
myself; and though Grandma Thorndyke was one of the best women that ever
lived on this footstool, and was much to me in my after life, I can not
think of her happiness at my despair without blaming her memory a
little. But she meant well. She had better plans, as she thought, for
Virginia, than any which she thought I could have.

3

It was not more than a week after this donation picnic, when I came home
for my nooning one day, and found a covered wagon in the yard, and two
strange horses in the stable. When I went to the house, there were Old
Man Fewkes and Mrs. Fewkes, and Surajah Dowlah and Celebrate Fourth. I
welcomed them heartily. I was