“But it’s the best we can afford,” she sighed; “and at the prices they’ll pay us they shouldn’t complain.”

Still the day was full of pleasurable excitement and anticipation to the young girl.  She was aware that her mother’s tasks and her own would be greatly increased, but on the other hand the monotony of the farm-house life would be broken, and in the more distant future she saw a vista of new gowns, a jaunty winter hat with a feather, and other like conditions of unalloyed happiness.  Susan had dwelt thus far in one of life’s secluded valleys, and if she lost much because her horizon was narrow she was shielded from far more.  Her fresh, full face had a certain pleasant, wholesome aspect, like the fields about her home in June, as she bustled about, preparing for the “city folks” whom her father so dreaded.

Roger’s buggy was not yet paid for.  It was the one great extravagance that Mr. Atwood had permitted for many a year.  As usual, his wife had led him into it, he growling and protesting, but unable to resist her peculiar persistency.  Roger was approaching man’s estate, and something must be done to signalize so momentous an event.  A light buggy was the goal of ambition to the young men in the vicinity, and Roger felt that he could never be a man without one.  He also recognized it as the best means of securing a wife to his mind, for courting on a moonlit, shadowy road was far more satisfactory than in the bosom of the young woman’s family.  Not that he was bent on matrimony, but rather on several years of agreeable preparation for it, proposing to make tentative acquaintances, both numerous and miscellaneous.

In his impatience to secure this four-wheeled compendium of happiness he had mortgaged his future, and had promised his father to plant and cultivate larger areas.  The shrewd farmer therefore had no prospect of being out of pocket, for the young man was keeping his word.  The acres of the cornfield were nearly double those of the previous year, and on them Roger spent the long hot day in vigorous labor in preference to the easy task of going to the river for the luggage.  Dusty and weary, but in excellent spirits over the large space that he and the hired man had “hilled up,” he went whistling home through the long shadows of the June evening.  The farm wagon stood in the door-yard piled with trunks.  The front entrance of the house—­rarely used by the family—­was open, and as he came up the lane a young girl emerged from it, and leaned for a few moments against the outer pillar of the little porch, unconscious of the picture she made.  A climbing rose was in bloom just over her head, and her cheeks, flushed with heat and fatigue, vied with them in color.  She had exchanged her travelling-dress for one of light muslin, and entwined in her hair a few buds from the bush that covered the porch.  If Roger was not gifted with a vivid imagination he nevertheless saw things very accurately, and before