a great,
wise man, and I think that you are just a silly old goose."

Jethro wiped his face with his blue cotton handkerchief.

"Then you hain't a-goin' to marry the Painter-man?" he said.

"I'm not going to marry anybody," cried Cynthia, contritely; "I'm going
to live with you and take care of you all my life."

On the morning of the Fourth, Cynthia drove to Brampton with the
Painter-man, and when he perceived that she was dreaming, he ceased to
worry her with his talk. He liked her dreaming, and stole many glances at
her face of which she knew nothing at all. Through the cool and fragrant
woods, past the mill-pond stained blue and white by the sky, and scented
clover fields and wayside flowers nodding in the morning air--Cynthia saw
these things in the memory of another journey to Brampton. On that Fourth
her father had been with her, and Jethro and Ephraim and Moses and Amanda
Hatch and the children. And how well she recalled, too, standing amidst
the curious crowd before the great house which Mr. Worthington had just
built.

There are weeks and months, perhaps, when we do not think of people, when
our lives are full and vigorous, and then perchance a memory will bring
them vividly before us--so vividly that we yearn for them. There rose
before Cynthia now the vision of a boy as he stood on the Gothic porch of
the house, and how he had come down to the wondering country people with
his smile and his merry greeting, and how he had cajoled her into
lingering in front of the meeting-house. Had he forgotten her? With just
a suspicion of a twinge, Cynthia remembered that Janet Duncan she had
seen at the capital, whom she had been told was the heiress of the state.
When he had graduated from Harvard, Bob would, of course, marry her. That
was in the nature of things.

To some the great event of that day in Brampton was to be the speech of
the Honorable Heth Sutton in the meeting-house at eleven; others (and
this party was quite as numerous) had looked forward to the base-ball
game between Brampton and Harwich in the afternoon. The painter would
have preferred to walk up meeting-house hill with Cynthia, and from the
cool heights look down upon the amphitheatre in which the town was built.
But Cynthia was interested in history, and they went to the meeting-house
accordingly, where she listened for an hour and a half to the patriotic
eloquence of the representative. The painter was glad to see and hear so
great a man in