Eunice had been home for a day or two with a felon on her thumb, and thus a greater proportion of the work had fallen upon Mrs. Markham, which to some degree accounted for her ill-humor.  Mrs. Jones and Melinda were spending the afternoon with her, but the latter was up in Ethie’s room.  Melinda had always a good many ideas of her own, and she had brought with her several new ones from Washington and New York, where she had stayed for four weeks at the Fifth Avenue Hotel.  But Melinda, though greatly improved in appearance, was not one whit spoiled.  In manner, and the fit of her dress, she was more like Ethelyn and Mrs. Judge Miller, of Camden, than she once had been, and at first James was a little afraid of her, she puffed her hair so high, and wore her gowns so long, while his mother, looking at the stylish hat and fashionable sack which she brought back from Gotham, said her head was turned, and she was altogether too fine for Olney.  But when, on the next rainy Sunday, she rode to church in her father’s lumber wagon, holding the blue cotton umbrella over her last year’s straw and waterproof—­and when arrived at the church she suffered James to help her to alight, jumping over the muddy wheel, and then going straight to her accustomed seat in the choir, which had missed her strong voice so much—­the son changed his mind, and said she was the same as ever; while after the day when she found Mrs. Markham making soap out behind the corn-house, and good-humoredly offered to watch it and stir it while that lady went into the house to see to the corn pudding, which Eunice was sure to spoil if left to her own ingenuity, the mother, too, changed her mind, and wished Richard had been so lucky as to have fixed his choice on Melinda.  But James was far from wishing a thing which would so seriously have interfered with his hopes and wishes.  He was very glad that Richard’s preference had fallen where it did, and his cheery whistle was heard almost constantly, and after Tim Jones told, in his blunt way, how “Melind was tryin’ to train him, and make him more like them dandies at the big tavern in New York,” he, too, began to amend, and taking Richard for his pattern, imitated him, until he found that simple, loving Andy, in his anxiety to please Ethelyn, had seized upon more points of etiquette than Richard ever knew existed, and then he copied Andy, having this in his favor:  that whatever he did himself was done with a certain grace inherent in his nature, whereas Andy’s attempts were awkward in the extreme.

Melinda saw the visible improvement in James, and imputing it rather to Ethelyn’s influence than her own, was thus saved from any embarrassment she might have experienced had she known to a certainty how large a share of James Markham’s thoughts and affections she possessed.  She was frequently at the farmhouse; but had not made what her mother called a visit until the afternoon when Mrs. Markham gave her opinion so freely of Aunt Barbara’s petting and its effect on Ethelyn.