“I am glad Aunt Sophia is suited.  Frank will be pleased with anything.”

“She does not care for him and I am glad, for he is not half smart enough for her,” was Aunt Barbara’s mental comment, as she laid the letter by for a second reading, and then told her niece, as the last item of news, that old Captain Markham’s nephew had come, and they were making a great ado over him now that he was a member of Congress, and a Judge, too.  They had asked the Howells and Grangers and the Carters there to tea for the next day, she said, adding that she and Ethelyn were also invited.  “They want to be polite to him,” old Mrs. Markham said.  Aunt Barbara continued, “but for my part, if I were he, I should not care much for politeness that comes so late.  I remember when he was here ten years ago, on such a matter, and they fairly acted as if they were ashamed of him then; but titles make a difference.  He’s an Honorable now, and the old Captain is mighty proud of him.”

What Aunt Barbara had said was strictly true, for there had been a time when proud old Captain Markham ignored his brother’s family living on the far prairies of the West; but when the eldest son, Richard, called for him, had become a growing man, as boys out West are apt to do, rising from justice of the peace to a member of the State Legislature, then to a judgeship, and finally to a seat in Congress, and all before he was quite thirty-two, the Captain’s tactics changed, and a most cordial letter, addressed to “My dear nephew,” and signed “Your affectionate uncle,” was sent to Washington, urging a visit from the young man ere he returned to Iowa.

And that was how Richard Markham, M.C., came to be in Chicopee at the precise time when Ethelyn’s heart was bleeding at every pore, and ready to seize upon any new excitement which would divert it from its pain.  She remembered well the time he had once before visited Chicopee.  She was a little girl of ten, fleeing across the meadow-land from a maddened cow, when a tall, athletic young man had come to her rescue, standing between her and danger, helping her over the fence, picking up the apron full of apples which she had been purloining from the Captain’s orchard, and even pinning together a huge rent made in her dress by catching it upon a protruding splint as she sprang to the ground.  She was too much frightened to know whether he had been wholly graceful in his endeavors to serve her, and too thankful for her escape to think that possibly her torn dress was the result of his rather awkward handling.  She remembered only the dark, handsome face which bent so near to hers, the brown, curly head actually bumping against her own, as he stooped to gather the stolen apples.  She remembered, too, the kindly voice which asked if “her aunt would scold,” while the large, red hands pinned together the unsightly seam, and she liked the Westerner, as the people of Chicopee called the stranger who had recently come among them.  Frank was in Chicopee then, fishing on the river, when her mishaps occurred; and once after that, when walking with him, she had met Richard Markham, who bowed modestly and passed on, never taking his hands from his pockets where they were planted so firmly, and never touching his hat as Frank said a gentleman would have done.