e already knows about you," I explained as fast as I could
talk, for I was getting into an awful mess. "You see he knows that you
want him to be a lawyer, and that he must quit plowing before he can be
more than friends with you. That's what he's plowing for! If it
wasn't for that, probably he wouldn't; be plowing at all. He asked
father to let him, and he borrowed mother's horses, and he hooked the
flowers through the fence. Every night when he comes home, he kneels
beside mother and asks her if he is 'repulsive,' and she takes him in
her arms and the tears roll down her cheeks and she says: 'Father has
farmed all his life, and you know how repulsive he is.'"

I ventured an upward peep. I was doing better. Her temper seemed to
be cooling, but her face was a jumble. I couldn't find any one thing
on it that would help me, so I just stumbled ahead guessing at what to
say.

"He didn't WANT to do it. He perfectly HATED it. Those fields were
his Waterloo. Every furrow was a FIGHT, but he was FORCED to show you."

"Exactly WHAT was he trying to show me?"

"I can think of three things he told me," I answered. "That plowing
could be so managed as not to disfigure the landscape----"

"The dunce!" she said.

"That he could plow or do dirtier work, and not be repulsive----"

"The idiot!" she said.

"That if he came over there, and plowed right under your nose, when
you'd told him he mustn't, or he couldn't be more than friends; and
when you knew that he'd much rather die and be laid beside the little
sisters up there in the cemetery than to NOT be more than friends, why,
you'd see, if he did THAT, he couldn't help it, that he just MUST.
That he was FORCED----"

"The soldier!" she said.

"Oh Princess, he didn't want to!" I cried. "He tells me secrets he
doesn't any one else, unless you. He told me how he hated it; but he
just had to do it."

"Do you know WHY?"

"Of course! It's the way he's MADE! Father is like that! He has
chances to live in cities, make big business deals, and go to the
legislature at Indianapolis; I've seen his letters from his friend
Oliver P. Morton, our Governor, you know; they're in his chest till
now; but father can't do it, because he is made so he stays at home and
works for us, and this farm, and township, and county where he belongs.
He says if all men will do that the millennium will come to-morrow. I
'spose you know what the millennium is?"

"I do!" said the Princes