“I’m coming to-morrow,” he called after her, but she did not turn.  In a little while she heard the carryall behind her clattering down the street, its passengers laughing and joking merrily.  Her face burned, for she thought that they were laughing at her; she wished with all her heart that she had not stopped to talk with him at the palings.  The girls, indeed, were giggling as the carryall passed, and she heard somebody call out his name, but nevertheless he leaned out of the seat and waved his hat at her, amid a shout of laughter.  Poor Cynthia!  She did not look at him.  Tears of vexation were in her eyes, and the light of her joy at this visit to the capital flickered, and she wished she were back in Coniston.  She thought it would be very nice to be rich, and to live in a great house in a city, and to go on picnics.

The light flickered, but it did not wholly go out.  If it has not been shown that Cynthia was endowed with a fair amount of sense, many of these pages have been written in vain.  She sat down for a while in the park and thought of the many things she had to be thankful for—­not the least of which was Jethro’s kindness.  And she remembered that she was to see “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that evening.

Such are the joys and sorrows of fifteen!

CHAPTER XV

Mr. Amos Cuthbert named it so—­our old friend Amos who lives high up in the ether of Town’s End ridge, and who now represents Coniston in the Legislature.  He is the same silent, sallow person as when Jethro first took a mortgage on his farm, only his skin is beginning to resemble dried parchment, and he is a trifle more cantankerous.  On the morning of that memorable day when, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” came to the capital, Amos had entered the Throne Room and given vent to his feelings in regard to the gentleman in the back seat who had demanded an evening sitting on behalf of the farmers.

“Don’t that beat all?” cried Amos.  “Let them have their darned woodchuck session; there won’t nobody go to it.  For cussed, crisscross contrariness, give me a moss-back Democrat from a one-boss, one-man town like Suffolk.  I’m a-goin’ to see the show.”

“G-goin’ to the show, be you, Amos?” said Jethro.

“Yes, I be,” answered Amos, bitterly.  “I hain’t agoin’ nigh the house to-night.”  And with this declaration he departed.

“I wonder if he really is going?” queried Mr. Merrill looking at the ceiling.  And then he laughed.

“Why shouldn’t he go?” asked William Wetherell.

Mr. Merrill’s answer to this question was a wink, whereupon he, too, departed.  And while Wetherell was pondering over the possible meaning of these words the Honorable Alva Hopkins entered, wreathed in smiles, and closed the door behind him.

“It’s all fixed,” he said, taking a seat near Jethro in the window.

“S-seen your gal—­Alvy—­seen your gal?”