“‘You bet they did!’ cried gran’ther with gusto.

“I felt the world changing into an infinitely larger place with every word he said.

“‘Now, this is somethin’ like!’ he exclaimed, as we drew near to Granville and fell into a procession of wagons all filled with country people in their best clothes, who looked with friendly curiosity at the little, shriveled cripple, his face shining with perspiring animation, and at the little boy beside him, his bare feet dangling high above the floor of the battered buckboard, overcome with the responsibility of driving a horse for the first time in his life, and filled with such a flood of new emotions and ideas that he must have been quite pale.”

Professor Mallory leaned back and laughed aloud at the vision he had been evoking—­laughed with so joyous a relish in his reminiscences that the drawn, impatient face of his listener relaxed a little.  He drew a long breath, he even smiled a little absently.

“Oh, that was a day!” went on the professor, still laughing and wiping his eyes.  “Never will I have such another!  At the entrance to the grounds gran’ther stopped me while he solemnly untied the knot in his empty sleeve.  I don’t know what kind of hairbrained vow he had tied up in it, but with the little ceremony disappeared every trace of restraint, and we plunged head over ears into the saturnalia of delights that was an old-time county fair.

“People had little cash in those days, and gran’ther’s six dollars and forty-three cents lasted like the widow’s cruse of oil.  We went to see the fat lady, who, if she was really as big as she looked to me then, must have weighed at least a ton.  My admiration for gran’ther’s daredevil qualities rose to infinity when he entered into free-and-easy talk with her, about how much she ate, and could she raise her arms enough to do up her own hair, and how many yards of velvet it took to make her gorgeous, gold-trimmed robe.  She laughed a great deal at us, but she was evidently touched by his human interest, for she confided to him that it was not velvet at all, but furniture covering; and when we went away she pressed on us a bag of peanuts.  She said she had more peanuts than she could eat—­a state of unbridled opulence which fitted in for me with all the other superlatives of that day.

“We saw the dog-faced boy, whom we did not like at all; gran’ther expressing, with a candidly outspoken cynicism, his belief that ’them whiskers was glued to him.’  We wandered about the stock exhibit, gazing at the monstrous oxen, and hanging over the railings where the prize pigs lived to scratch their backs.  In order to miss nothing, we even conscientiously passed through the Woman’s Building, where we were very much bored by the serried ranks of preserve jars.

“‘Sufferin’ Hezekiah!’ cried gran’ther irritably ’Who cares how gooseberry jel looks.  If they’d give a felly a taste, now—­’