does seem to be the natural way of things.  But people rather resented her catching their children on the street and stripping off their shoes and stockings, and sending the little things home with them in their hands.  However, their mothers put on the shoes and stockings, and thought she must mean well.  Very few of them said anything to her by way of expostulation; but the children finally ran when they saw her coming, so they would not have their shoes and stockings taken off.

All this time, while Mrs. H. Boardman Jameson was striving to improve us, her daughter Harriet was seemingly devoting all her energies to the improvement of Harry Liscom, or to the improvement of her own ideal in his heart, whichever it may have been; and I think she succeeded in each case.

Neither Mrs. Liscom nor Mrs. Jameson seemed aware of it, but people began to say that Harry Liscom and the eldest Jameson girl were going together.

I had no doubt of it after what I had seen in the grove; and one evening during the last of July I had additional evidence.  In the cool of the day I strolled down the road a little way, and finally stopped at the old Wray house.  Nobody lived there then; it had been shut up for many a year.  I thought I would sit down on the old doorstep and rest, and I had barely settled myself when I heard voices.  They came around the corner from the south piazza, and I could not help hearing what they said, though I rose and went away as soon as I had my wits about me and fairly knew that I was eavesdropping.

“You are so far above me,” said a boy’s voice which I knew was Harry Liscom’s.

Then came the voice of the girl in reply:  “Oh, Harry, it is you who are so far above me.”  Then I was sure that they kissed each other.

I reflected as I stole softly away, lest they should discover me and be ashamed, that, after all, it was only love which could set people upon immeasurable heights in each other’s eyes, and stimulate them to real improvement and to live up to each other’s ideals.

IV

THEY TAKE A FARM

I had wondered a little, after Mrs. Jameson’s frantic appeal to me to secure another boarding-place for her, that she seemed to settle down so contentedly at Caroline Liscom’s.  She said nothing more about her dissatisfaction, if she felt any.  However, I fancy that Mrs. Jameson is one to always conceal her distaste for the inevitable, and she must have known that she could not have secured another boarding-place in Linnville.  As for Caroline Liscom, her mouth is always closed upon her own affairs until they have become matters of history.  She never said a word to me about the Jamesons until they had ceased to be her boarders, which was during the first week in August.  My sister-in-law, Louisa Field, came home one afternoon with the news.  She had been over to Mrs. Gregg’s to get her receipt for blackberry jam, and had heard it there.  Mrs. Gregg always knew about the happenings in our village before they fairly gathered form on the horizon of reality.