His income was a limited one, although it had been a good deal helped by the products of his farm, and he had to do a great deal of calculating with his pencil before he dared to order work which would oblige him to draw a check with his pen.  But by thus giving two dollars’ worth of thought to every dollar of expenditure, he made his money go a long way, and the lively and personal interest he took in every little improvement, made a garden fence to him of as much importance and satisfaction as a new post-office would have been to the people of Thorbury.

One day he went into a hardware store of the town to buy some nails, and there he met Miss Panney, who had just purchased a corkscrew.

“A thing you will not want for some time,” she said, “for you do not look as if you needed anything to cheer your soul.  Now tell me, young man, is it really the engagement rapture that has lasted all this time?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ralph, laughing, “and besides that I have had all sorts of good fortune.  For instance, one of my hens, setting unbeknown to anybody in a warm corner of the barn, has hatched out a dozen little chicks.  Think of that at this season!  I have put them in a warm room, and by the time we begin housekeeping we shall have spring chickens to eat before anybody else.  And then there is that black colt, Dom Pedro.  I had great doubts about him, because he showed such decided symptoms of free will, but now he is behaving beautifully.  He has become thoroughly reconciled to a haycart.  I have driven him in a light wagon with his sister, and he is just as good as she is, and yesterday I drove him single, and find that he has made up his mind to learn everything I can teach him.  Now isn’t that a fine thing?”

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Panney, “it must be such things as those that make your eyes sparkle!  But of course it warms your heart to give her delicate eating when she first comes to you, and to have a fine pair of horses for her to drive behind.  If your face beams as it does now while she is away, it will serve as an electric light when she comes back.  Good fortune!  Oh, yes, of course, you consider that you have it in full measure.  But we are sometimes apt to look on our friends’ good fortune in an odd way.  Now, if I had wanted you to go to Boston to get rich, and instead of that you had insisted on going to Nantucket, and had become rich there, I suppose that I should have been satisfied as long as you were prosperous, but I do not believe I would have been; at least, not entirely so.  In this world we do want people to do what we think they ought to do.”

“Yes,” said Ralph, knowingly, “I see.  But now, Miss Panney, don’t you really think that Boston would have been too rich a place for me?  That it would have expected too much of me, and that perhaps it would have done too much for me?  Boston is a good enough place, but if you only knew how much lovelier Nantucket is—­”

“Stop, stop, boy!” said the old lady.  “I am getting so old now, that I am obliged to stop happy people and disappointed people from talking to me.  If I listened to all they had to say, I should have no time for anything else.  By the way, have you heard any news from the Bannister family?  That sedate Herbert is going to be married, and he intends to live with his wife in the Bannister mansion.”