“But how am I such a dunce, Carlia?”

“In not seeing how much Mildred thinks of you.”

“Thinks of me?  Mildred?”

“She just loves you.”

Carlia still looked straight ahead as though fearful to see the agitation she had brought to the young man; but he looked at her, with cheeks still aflame.  He did not understand Carlia.  Why had she said that?  Was she just teasing him?  But she did not look as if she were teasing.  Silently they walked on to the school house door.

But Dorian could not forget what Carlia had said.  All day it intruded into his lessons.  “She said she loves me” he whispered to his heart only.  Could it be possible?  Even if she did, what final good would come of it?  The distance between them was still too great, for he was only a poor farmer boy.  Dear Mildred—­his heart did not chide him for thinking that—­so frail, so weak, so beautiful.  What if she—­should die!  Dorian was in a strange state of mind for a number of days.  He longed to visit the Brown home, yet he could not find excuse to go.  He could not talk to anybody about what was in his mind and heart, not even to his mother with whom he always shared his most hidden thoughts.

One evening he visited Uncle Zed, ostensibly, to talk about a book.  Uncle Zed was deep in the study of “Natural Law in the Spiritual World” and would have launched into a discussion of what he had found, but Dorian did not respond; he had other thoughts in mind.

“Uncle Zed,” he said, “how can I become something else than a farmer?”

The old man looked questioningly at his young friend.  “What’s the matter with being a farmer?” he asked.

“Well, a farmer doesn’t usually amount to much, I mean in the eyes of the world.  Farmers seem to be in a different class from merchants, for example, or from bankers or other more genteel workers.”

“Listen to me, Dorian Trent.”  Uncle Zed laid down his book as if he had a serious task before him.  “Let me tell you something.  If you haven’t done so before, begin now and thank the Lord that you began life on this globe of ours as a farmer’s child and boy.  Whatever you do or become in the future, you have made a good beginning.  You have already laid away in the way of concepts, we may say, a generous store of nature’s riches, for you have been in close touch with the earth, and the life which teems in soil and air and the waters.  Pity the man whose childish eyes looked out on nothing but paved streets and brick walls or whose young ears heard nothing but the harsh rumble of the city, for his early conceptions from which to interpret his later life is artificial and therefore largely untrue.”

Uncle Zed smiled up into the boy’s face as if to ask, Do you get that?  Dorian would have to have time to assimilate the idea; meanwhile, he had another question: 

“Uncle Zed, why are there classes among members of our Church?”