“I think —­ I think,” said Agatha, “that Nancy Ellen has much upon which to congratulate herself.  More education would not injure her, but she has enough that if she will allow her ambition to rule her and study in private and spend her spare time communing with the best writers, she can make an exceedingly fair intellectual showing, while she surely is a handsome woman.  With a good home and such a fine young professional man as she has had the good fortune to attract, she should immediately put herself at the head of society in Hartley and become its leader to a much higher moral and intellectual plane than it now occupies.”

“Bet she has a good time,” said young Adam.  “He’s awful nice.”

“Son,” said Agatha, “‘awful,’ means full of awe.  A cyclone, a cloudburst, a great conflagration are awful things.  By no stretch of the imagination could they be called nice.”

“But, Ma, if a cyclone blew away your worst enemy wouldn’t it be nice?”

Adam, Jr., and Kate laughed.  Not the trace of a smile crossed Agatha’s pale face.

“The words do not belong in contiguity,” she said.  “They are diametrically opposite in meaning.  Please do not allow my ears to be offended by hearing you place them in propinquity again.”

“I’ll try not to, Ma,” said young Adam; then Agatha smiled on him approvingly.  “When did you meet Mr. Gray, Katherine?” she asked.

“On the foot-log crossing the creek beside Lang’s line fence.  Near the spot Nancy Ellen first met him I imagine.”

“How did you recognize him?”

“Nancy Ellen had just been showing me his picture and telling me about him.  Great Day, but she’s in love with him!”

“And so he is with her, if Lang’s conclusions from his behaviour can be depended upon.  They inform me that he can be induced to converse on no other subject.  The whole arrangement appeals to me as distinctly admirable.”

“And you should see the lilac bush and the cabbage roses,” said Kate.  “And the strangest thing is Father.  He is peaceable as a lamb.  She is not to teach, but to spend the winter sewing on her clothes and bedding, and Father told her he would give her the necessary money.  She said so.  And I suspect he will.  He always favoured her because she was so pretty, and she can come closer to wheedling him than any of the rest of us excepting you, Agatha.”

“It is an innovation, surely!”

“Mother is nearly as bad.  Father furnishing money for clothes and painting the barn is no more remarkable than Mother letting her turn the house inside out.  If it had been I, Father would have told me to teach my school this winter, buy my own clothes and linen with the money I had earned, and do my sewing next summer.  But I am not jealous.  It is because she is handsome, and the man fine-looking and with such good prospects.”

“There you have it!” said Adam emphatically.  “If it were you, marrying Jim Lang, to live on Lang’s west forty, you would pay your own way.  But if it were you marrying a fine-looking young doctor, who will soon be a power in Hartley, no doubt, it would tickle Father’s vanity until he would do the same for you.”