uffler about his neck, but he declined
that also. He didn't need it, he said; but he was thinking of the
incongruity of a muffler with no overcoat. It seemed more logical to
assume that the weather was milder than it really was, on that sharp
October evening, and appear at his best, albeit rather aware of the cold.
Jennie was at home, and he was likely to see and be seen of her.

"You can borrow that tester," said the colonel, "and the cows that go with
it, if you can use 'em. They ain't earning their keep here. But how does
the milk tester fit into the curriculum of the school? A decoration?"

"We want to make a few tests of the cows in the neighborhood," answered
Jim. "Just another of my fool notions."

"All right," said the colonel. "Take it along. Going to the speakin'?"

"Certainly, he's going," said Jennie, entering. "This is my meeting,
Jim."

"Surely, I'm going," assented Jim. "And I think I'll run along."

"I wish we had room for you in the car," said the colonel. "But I'm going
around by Bronson's to pick up the speaker, and I'll have a chuck-up
load."

"Not so much of a load as you think," said Jennie. "I'm going with Jim.
The walk will do me good."

Any candidate warms to her voting population just before election; but
Jennie had a special kindness for Jim. He was no longer a farm-hand. The
fact that he was coming to be a center of disturbance in the district, and
that she quite failed to understand how his eccentric behavior could be
harmonized with those principles of teaching which she had imbibed at the
state normal school in itself lifted him nearer to equality with her. A
public nuisance is really more respectable than a nonentity.

She gave Jim a thrill as she passed through the gate that he opened for
her. White moonlight on her white furs suggested purity, exaltation, the
essence of womanhood--things far finer in the woman of twenty-seven than
the glamour thrown over him by the schoolgirl of sixteen.

Jim gave her no thrill; for he looked gaunt and angular in his skimpy,
ready-made suit, too short in legs and sleeves, and too thin for the
season. Yet, as they walked along, Jim grew upon her. He strode on with
immense strides, made slow to accommodate her shorter steps, and
embarrassing her by his entire absence of effort to keep step. For all
that, he lifted his face to the stars, and he kept silence, save for
certain fragments of his thoughts, in dropping which he assumed that she,
like