r, cold meat, and pie, in a little basket hung on the horn of the
saddle, and sometimes, when she had been trotting, found on reaching
school that part of it had fallen out on the way.

The road over which she passed every morning and evening grew familiar
to her, even to the individual trees, the mossy old stumps, the
fence-corners over-grown with wild vines. The life of the farm-houses,
as daily presented to her, furnished perpetual entertainment. She came
to know every member of every family by sight, and to associate certain
traits of character with them. Some two-story white houses stood back
from the road in the retirement of fruit- and shade-trees, and seemed
reserved and dignified; other smaller houses were only a few steps
removed, and had their wood-piles on the side of the road. One little
new cabin in the corner of a strip of woods especially interested
Elvira. It was the home of a lately-married pair, young folks full of
energy and ambition. The husband chopped down trees, ploughed, or
ditched his land, as if he were working for a wager, and the wife was
equally active and industrious. Her bright tin milk-pans were out
sunning early every morning, her churning and ironing were done in the
cool part of the forenoons, her front yard was always neatly swept, and
the borders were bright with balsams, petunias, and other flowers.

Then the world of nature unfolded every day something fresh to the
solitary rider,--the blue depths of summer sky in which great masses of
dazzling white clouds were heaped, the thick beech woods, where it was
always cool and pleasant, the swamps, with their spicy fragrance, their
variety of growth, and their slow-running streams of clear brown water.
The blossoming blue-flags of May gave way in June to the fragrant wild
roses, and these were followed in July and August by ripe raspberries
and blackberries, which grew plentifully along the fence-corners and
could be had for the picking.

Toward the latter part of the term, Elvira was frequently invited by her
pupils to go home with them on Friday night and spend Saturday at their
house, now one girl, now another, saying, "Miss Hill, mother said ask
you to come home with us to-night." And when she went, she found that
the farmer's wife had prepared something extra for supper in expectation
of her coming,--fried chicken, and honey, and other home luxuries,--and
seemed glad of the little break in the monotony of farm-life which the
scho