and Mildred had many a weary chase after the little explorers.  In spite of his clearly defined policy of indifference, Roger found himself watching her on such occasions with a growing interest.  It was evident to him that she did not in the slightest degree resent his daily declaration of independence; indeed, he saw that she scarcely gave him any thoughts whatever—­that he was to her no more than heavy-footed Jotham.

“She does not even consider me worth snubbing,” he thought, with much dissatisfaction, about a week subsequent to their arrival.

In vain, after the labors of the day, he dressed in his best suit and sported a flaming necktie; in vain he dashed away in his buggy, and, a little later, dashed by again with a rural belle at his side.  He found himself unable to impress the city girl as he desired, or to awaken in her a sense of his importance.  And yet he already began to feel, in a vague way, that she was not so distant to him, as distant from him.

Belle soon formed his acquaintance, asking innumerable questions and not a few favors, and she found him more good-natured than she had been led to expect.  At last, to her great delight, he took her with him in his wagon to the post-office.  The lively girl interested and amused him, but he felt himself immeasurably older than she.  With a tendency common to very young men, he was more interested in the elder sister, who in character and the maturity that comes from experience was certainly far beyond him.  Belle he understood, but Mildred was a mystery, and she had also the advantage of being a very beautiful one.

As time passed and no definite assurances came from her father, the young girl was conscious of a growing dissatisfaction with the idle, weary waiting to which she and her mother were condemned.  She felt that it might have been better for them all to have remained in the city, in spite of the summer heat, than thus to be separated.  She believed that she might have found something to do which would have aided in their support, and she understood more clearly than her mother that their slender means were diminishing fast.  That she could do anything at a country farmhouse to assist her father seemed very doubtful, but she felt the necessity of employment more strongly each day, not only for the sake of the money it might bring, but also as an antidote to a growing tendency to brood over her deep disappointment.  She soon began to recognize that such self-indulgence would unfit her for a struggle that might be extended and severe, and was not long in coming to the conclusion that she must make the best of her life as it was and would be.  Days and weeks had slipped by and had seen her looking regretfully back at the past, which was receding like the shores of a loved country to an exile.  Since the prospect of returning to it was so slight, it would be best to turn her thoughts and such faint hope as she could cherish toward the vague and unpromising future.  At any rate she must so occupy herself as to have no time for morbid self-communings.