“If you’re going to burn hay,” soliloquized Dab, “it wont do to take a barn for a stove.  Not that kind of a barn.  But what did Ham Morris mean by saying I was to go to boarding-school?  That’s what I’d like to know.”

The secret was out.

He had kept remarkably still, for him, all the evening, and had not asked a question; but if his brains were ever to work over his books as they had over Ham’s remark, his future chances for sound sleep were all gone.  It had come upon him so suddenly, the very thing he had been wishing for during all those walks and talks and lessons of all sorts with Ford Foster and Frank Harley ever since the cruise of the “Swallow.”

It was a wonderful idea, and Dab had his doubts as to the way his mother would take to it when it should be brought seriously before her.  Little he guessed the truth.  Ham’s remark had found other ears as well as Dabney’s, and there were reasons, therefore, why good Mrs. Kinzer was sitting by the window of her own room, at that very moment, as little inclined to sleep as was the boy she was thinking of.  So proud of him, too, she was, and so full of bright, motherly thoughts of the man he would make “one of these days, when he gets his growth.”

There must have been a good deal of sympathy between Dab and his mother, for, by and by, just as she began to feel drowsy and muttered, “Well, well, we’ll have a talk about it to-morrow,” Dab found himself nodding against the window-frame, and slowly rose from his chair, remarking: 

“Guess I might as well finish that dream in bed.  If I’d tumbled out o’ the window I’d have lit among Mirandy’s rose-bushes.  They’ve got their thorns all on at this time o’ night.”

It was necessary for them both to sleep hard after that, for more than half the night was gone and they were to be up early.  So indeed they were; but what surprised Mrs. Kinzer when she went into the kitchen was to find Miranda there before her.

“You here, my dear?  That’s right.  I’ll take a look at the milk-room.  Where’s Ham?”

“Out among the stock.  Dab’s just gone to him.”

Curious things people will do at times.  Miranda had put down the coffee-pot on the range.  There was not a single one of the farm “help” around, male or female, and there stood the blooming young bride, with her back toward her mother, and staring out through the open door.  And then Mrs. Kinzer slipped forward and put her arms around her daughter’s neck.

Well, it was very early in the morning for those two women to stand there and cry; but it seemed to do them good, and Miranda remarked, at last, as she kissed Mrs. Kinzer:  “O mother, it is all so good and beautiful, and I’m so happy.”

And then they both laughed in a subdued and quiet way, and Miranda picked up the coffee-pot while her mother walked away into the milk-room.

Such cream as there seemed to be on all the pans that morning!