Lydia had not gone to the prayer meeting.  She was sitting on the piazza, quite alone.  She arose when her determined visitor boldly walked up the steps.

“Oh, it is you!” said she.

An unreasonable feeling of elation arose in the young man’s breast.

“Did you think I wasn’t coming?” he inquired, with all the egotism of which he had been justly accused.

He did not wait for her reply; but proceeded with considerable humor to describe his previous unsuccessful attempts to see her.

“I suppose,” he added, “Mrs. Solomon Black has kindly warned you against me?”

She could not deny it; so smiled instead.

“Well,” said the young man, “I give you my word I’m not a villain:  I neither drink, steal, nor gamble.  But I’m not a saint, after the prescribed Brookville pattern.”

He appeared rather proud of the fact, she thought.  Aloud she said, with pardonable curiosity: 

“What is the Brookville pattern?  I ought to know, since I am to live here.”

At this he dropped his bantering tone.

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said gravely.

“You mean—?”

“About your buying the old Bolton place and paying such a preposterous price for it, and all the rest, including the minister’s back-pay.”

She remained silent, playing with the ribbon of her sash.

“I have a sort of inward conviction that you’re not doing it because you think Brookville is such a pleasant place to live in,” he went on, keenly observant of the sudden color fluttering in her cheeks, revealed by the light of Mrs. Solomon Black’s parlor lamp which stood on a stand just inside the carefully screened window.  “It looks,” he finished, “as if you—­well; it may be a queer thing for me to say; but I’ll tell you frankly that when mother showed me the check she got today I felt that it was—­charity.”

She shook her head.

“Oh, no,” she said quickly.  “You are quite, quite in the wrong.”

“But you can’t make me believe that with all your money—­pardon me for mentioning what everybody in the village is talking about—­ You’ll have to convince me that the old Bolton place has oil under it, or coal or diamonds, before I—­”

“Why should you need to be convinced of anything so unlikely?” she asked, with gentle coldness.

He reddened angrily.

“Of course it’s none of my business,” he conceded.

“I didn’t mean that.  But, naturally, I could have no idea of coal or oil—­”

“Well; I won’t work for you at any four dollars a day,” he said loudly.  “I thought I’d like to tell you.”

“I don’t want you to,” she said.  “Didn’t Deacon Whittle give you my message?”

He got hurriedly to his feet with a muttered exclamation.

“Please sit down, Mr. Dodge,” she bade him tranquilly.  “I’ve been wanting to see you all day.  But there are so few telephones in Brookville it is difficult to get word to people.”