so! Lor'! Jacob, what does he want down there with
Mell?"

"What does he want? If you had a single grain of sense, Alvirey, you'd
know without any telling. He wants to make a fool of her! That's what
a man generally has in view when he runs after a woman. But, I am a
thinking, that chap won't make no fool out of Mell, for Mell's got a
long head, like her old daddy, and a tongue of learning to back it!
Just you keep on a saying nothing. You never missed getting things
into a mess yet, as I knows on, 'cept when you let 'em alone. I'll
shut down on him right away, and then I'll be _blarsted_ if Mell can't
take care of herself! Don't be nowise uneasy, Alvirey. Mell takes
after her old dad."

Alvirey did not return immediately to her churning. She craned her
neck and got on her tiptoes, and gazed curiously after her husband as
his stout figure rolled heavily to the edge of the breezy woodland,
and thence beyond to the newly cleared grounds, and onward still to
that narrow path among the pines, whose turf-margined and daisy-dotted
track was a covert way to the meadow. Presently, through its mazy
windings and the medium of a hazy summer atmosphere, Mr. Creecy came
in sight of a youthful Jersey, sedately cropping some tender blades of
grass on the enticing borderland of a promising cornfield, and a young
girl not far away seated on an old stump in a shady nook under a clump
of trees. Her costume consisted principally of an airy muslin frock,
nebulous in figure, and falling about her in simple folds, and a white
sun-bonnet, which was a bonnet and something more--to be explicit, an
artistic elaboration of tucks and puffs and piled-on embroideries,
beneath which peeped forth a face as prodigal of blooming sweets as a
basket heaped with spring flowers.

At her feet lounged in careless fashion a young man. He was lithe and
straight, and had that striking cast of countenance which catches the
observant eye on first sight. This look of distinction, which in him
was as marked in form as in feature, has been called, not inaptly,
thoroughbredness. A self-made man never has it. All that a man may do
will not put it upon himself, but his son possesses it as an
heritage.

Looking upon such persons, we know intuitively that they have always
had the best of everything, beginning from their cradle, the best of
_its_ kind.

Not always strong, these thoroughbred faces are generally attractive.
The one before us possesses both strength and