For a moment I knew not how to answer him.  Nettled as I had been by Sally’s treatment of me, the offer was like rubbing ashes on the soreness of my spirit.

I blushed and surveyed my garments and said: 

“I guess I look pretty badly, don’t I?”

“You look all right, but I thought, maybe, you would feel better in softer raiment, especially if you care to go around much with the young people.  I am an old friend of the family and I guess it would be proper for me to buy the clothes for you.  When you are older you can buy a suit for me, sometime, if you care to.”

It should be understood that well-to-do people in the towns were more particular about their dress those days than now.

“I’ll ask my aunt and uncle about it,” I proposed.

“That’s all right,” he answered.  “I’m going to drive up to your house this afternoon and your uncle wishes you to go with me.  We are all to have a talk with Mr. Grimshaw.”

He left me and I went over to Mr. Wright’s.

They told me that he was cutting corn in the back lot, where I found him.

“How do I look in these clothes?” I bravely asked.

“Like the son of a farmer up in the hills and that’s just as you ought to look,” he answered.

In a moment he added as he reaped a hill of corn with his sickle.

“I suppose they are making fun of you, partner.”

“Some,” I answered, blushing.

“Don’t mind that,” he advised, and then quoted the stanza: 

     “Were I as tall to reach the pole
       Or grasp the ocean in a span,
     I’d still me measured by my soul;
       The mind’s the standard of the man.”

“Mr. Dunkelberg came this morning and wanted to buy me some new clothes and boots,” I said.

[Illustration:  “Good Lord!  What wilt thou give me when I grow childless?”]

The Senator stopped work and stood looking at me with his hands upon his hips.

“I wouldn’t let him do it if I were you,” he said thoughtfully.

Just then I saw a young man come running toward us in the distant field.

Mr. Wright took out his compass.

“Look here,” he said, “you see the needle points due north.”

He took a lodestone out of his pocket and holding it near the compass moved it back and forth.  The needle followed it.

The young man came up to us breathing deeply.  Perspiration was rolling off his face.  He was much excited and spoke with some difficulty.

“Senator Wright,” he gasped, “Mrs. Wright sent me down to tell you that President Van Buren is at the house.”

I remember vividly the look of mild amusement in the Senator’s face and the serene calmness with which he looked at the young man and said to him: 

“Tell Mrs. Wright to make him comfortable in our easiest chair and to say to the President that I shall be up directly.”