pride in me! and
that's the reason they always looked down on me."

PARSON.--"Your parents must be well off, and I shall apply to them in a
year or two on behalf of Lenny, for they promised me to provide for him
when he grew up, as they ought."

WIDOW, with flashing eyes.--"I am sure, sir, I hope you will do no such
thing; for I would not have Lenny beholden to them as has never given him
a kind word sin' he was born!"

The Parson smiled gravely and shook his head at poor Mrs. Fairfield's
hasty confutation of her own self-acquittal from the charge of pride, but
he saw that it was not the time or moment for effectual peace-making in
the most irritable of all rancors, viz., that nourished against one's
nearest relations. He therefore dropped that subject, and said, "Well,
time enough to think of Lenny's future prospects: meanwhile we are
forgetting the hay-makers. Come."

The widow opened the back door, which led across a little apple orchard
into the fields.

PARSON.--"You have a pleasant place here, and I see that my friend Lenny
should be in no want of apples. I had brought him one, but I have given it
away on the road."

WIDOW.--"Oh, sir, it is not the deed--it is the will; as I felt when the
Squire, God bless him! took two pounds off the rent the year he--that is,
Mark--died."

PARSON.--"If Lenny continues to be such a help to you, it will not be long
before the Squire may put the two pounds on again."

"Yes, sir," said the widow simply; "I hope he will."

"Silly woman!" muttered the Parson. "That's not exactly what the
schoolmistress would have said. You don't read nor write, Mrs. Fairfield;
yet you express yourself with great propriety."

"You know Mark was a schollard, sir, like my poor, poor, sister; and
though I was a sad stupid girl afore I married, I tried to take after him
when we came together."

Chapter IV.

They were now in the hayfield, and a boy of about sixteen, but like most
country lads, to appearance much younger than he was, looked up from his
rake, with lively blue eyes, beaming forth under a profusion of brown
curly hair.

Leonard Fairfield was indeed a very handsome boy--not so stout nor so ruddy
as one would choose for the ideal of rustic beauty; nor yet so delicate in
limb and keen in expression as are those children of cities, in whom the
mind is cultivated at the expense of the body; but still he had the health
of the country in his cheeks, and was not without the gra