f the owner; there were agricultural machines and
implements, and patent pumps for stock-yards, and improved cross-cut
saws, each strongly recommended to the public by a glib-tongued agent.
Then there were stands for the sale of ice-cream, lemonade, and peanuts
and candy; and no rural beau felt that he had done the polite thing
unless he took his girl up to the counter and treated her. When he had
strolled all over the ground with her, and perhaps taken her into one or
two side-shows, where there were negro minstrels or the Wild Australian
Children, he went and sat in a buggy with her, and they talked, and
waited for the horse-race, or balloon-ascension, or wire-walking, which
was the especial attraction of the afternoon.

"Why, who's that with Tom Worth?" asked one Buck Creek belle of her
escort as they were thus sitting together. "I didn't know that he was
goin' with anybody?"

"I didn't, either," was the response; then, after a little pause, "I'll
swan, it's Miss Hill, the school-ma'am. Who'd 'a' thought they would be
here together? I didn't know they were acquainted."

And this remark was echoed by other Buck Creek people as they saw the
couple walking together. But there is a law of affinity by which people
are drawn together as lovers or as friends, which is like some of the
hidden forces of nature: we cannot see their operation, we can only see
their results. Some one has made the paradoxical remark that we are
acquainted with our friends before we ever see them; meaning that our
tastes for the same pursuits or subjects, traits of character that
harmonize, views that coincide, have been ripening apart, and, when at
last we meet, that is sufficient; it does not require a long
acquaintanceship to reveal one to the other.

Young Farmer Worth was now in the habit of frequently calling to see
Elvira Hill, and of taking her out riding in his buggy, that being an
approved form of courtship in this section. They talked of their
favorite books and studies, their ambitions for the future as regarded
mental culture, and their individual plans.

Elvira had applied for the position of assistant in the Hill's Station
school, and had been engaged as first assistant instead of second, which
was better than she had hoped. She would have to hear some advanced
classes from the principal's room, and this would require her to study,
which would be a source of improvement.

Young Farmer Worth, whose father had died three years b