he reached the head of the lane admitted to himself that the old “front steps” had never been so graced before.  He had seen many a rustic beauty standing there when his sister had company, but the city girl impressed him with a difference which he then could not understand.  He was inclined to resent this undefined superiority, and he muttered, “Father’s right.  They are birds of too fine a feather for our nest.”

He had to pass near her in order to reach the kitchen door, or else make a detour which his pride would not permit.  Indeed, the youth plodded leisurely along with his hoe on his shoulder, and scrupled not to scrutinize the vision on the porch with the most matter-of-fact minuteness.

“What makes her so ’down in the mouth’?” he queried.  “She doesn’t fancy us barbarians, I suppose, and Forestville to her is a howling wilderness.  Like enough she’ll take me for an Indian.”

Mildred’s eyes were fixed on a great shaggy mountain in the west, that was all the more dark and forbidding in its own deep shadow.  She did not see it, however, for her mind was dwelling on gloomier shadows than the mountain cast.

As he passed he caught her attention, and stepping toward him a little impatiently, she said,

“I suppose you belong to the premises?”

He made an awkward attempt at a bow, and said stiffly, “I’m one of the Atwood chattels.”

The answer was not such as she expected, and she gave him a scrutinizing glance.  “Surely, if I have ever seen a laborer, he’s one,” she thought, as with woman’s quickness she inventoried his coarse, weather-stained straw hat, blue cotton shirt crossed by suspenders mended with strings, shapeless trousers, once black, but now of the color of the dusty cornfield, and shoes such as she had never seen on the avenue.  Even if Roger’s face had not been discolored by perspiration and browned by exposure, its contrast with the visage that memory kept before her but too constantly would not have been pleasing.  Nothing in his appearance deterred her from saying briefly, “I wish you would bring those trunks to our rooms.  We have already waited for them some little time, and Mr. Atwood said that his man would attend to them when he came home from his work.”

“That’s all right, but I’m not his man, and with another stiff bow he passed on.

“Roger,” called Mrs. Atwood from the kitchen door, “where’s Jotham?”

“Bringing home the cows.”

“The ladies want their trunks,” continued his mother, in a sharp, worried tone.  “I wish you men-folks would see to ’em right away.  Why couldn’t you quit work a little earlier to-night?”

Roger made no reply, but proceeded deliberately to help himself to a wash-basin and water.

“Look here, Roger,” said his mother, in a tone she seldom used, “if those trunks are not where they belong in ten minutes, Susan and I’ll take ’em up ourselves.”

“That would be a pretty story to go out,” added his sister.  “Little use your buggy would be to you then, for no nice girl would ride with you.”