LITMIR.BIZ

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and uncomfortable round slats in the back; there were some rank-and-file chairs besides, – these were black, with yellow stripes; and there was a green settee with three rockers beneath and an arm at each end.

      Henry Miller was a square-set young fellow, without a spark of romance in him. He had plowed corn all day, and he would have danced all night had the chance offered, and then followed the plow the next day. His sisters were like him, plain and of a square type that bespoke a certain sort of "Pennsylvania Dutch" ancestry, though the Millers had migrated to Illinois, not from Pennsylvania, but from one of the old German settlements in the valley of Virginia. Ike jumped out of the apple-tree to follow Virginia, the youngest of the Millers, into the house; there was between him and "Ginnie," as she was called, that sort of adolescent attachment, or effervescent reaction, which always appears to the parties involved in it the most serious interest in the universe, and to everybody else something deliciously ridiculous; a sort of burlesque of the follies of people more mature.

      This was destined to be one of Rachel's "company evenings"; she had not more than seated the Millers and taken the girls' bonnets to a place of security, when there was a knock on the door-jamb. It was Mely McCord, who had once been a hired help in the Albaugh family. There were even in that day wide differences in wealth and education in Illinois, but class demarcations there were not. Nothing was more natural than that Mely, who had come over from Hubbard township to visit some cousin in the neighborhood, should visit the Albaughs. Mely McCord was a girl – she was always called a girl, though now a little in the past tense – with a stoop in the shoulders, and hair that would have been better if it had been positively and decoratively red. As it was, her head seemed always striving to be red without ever attaining to any purity of color.

      Half an hour later, Magill, an Irish bachelor of thirty-five, who, being county clerk, was prudently riding through the country in order to keep up his acquaintance with the voters, hitched his horse at the fence outside of the Albaugh gate, and came in just as Rachel was bringing a candle. Though he had no notion of cumbering himself with a family or with anything else likely to interfere with the freedom or pleasure of "an Irish gentleman," Magill was very fond of playing at gallantry, and he affected a great liking for what he called "faymale beauty," and plumed himself on the impression his own sprucely dressed person and plump face – a little overruddy, especially toward the end of the nose – might make on the sex. He could never pass Albaugh's without stopping to enjoy a platonic flirtation with Rachel. George Lockwood arrived at the same time; he was a clerk in Wooden's store, at the county-seat village of Moscow, and he could manage, on his busiest days even, to spend half an hour in selling a spool of cotton thread to Rachel Albaugh. He had now come five miles in the vain hope of finding her alone. The country beauty appreciated the flattery of his long ride, and received his attention with a pleasure undisguised.

      George Lockwood's was no platonic sentiment. He watched intently every motion of Rachel's arms only half-hidden in her open-sleeved dress; even the rustling of the calico of her gown made his pulses flutter. He made a shame-faced effort to conceal his agitation; he even tried to devote himself to Mely McCord and the "Miller girls" now and then; but his eyes followed Rachel's tranquil movements, as she amused herself with Magill's bald flatteries, and Lockwood could not help turning himself from side to side in order to keep the ravishing vision in view when he was talking to some one else.

      "You had better make the most of your chance, Mr. Lockwood," said pert little Virginia Miller, piqued by his absent-minded pretense of talking with her.

      "What do you mean?" he asked.

      "Oh, talk to Rachel while you can, for maybe after a while you can't!"

      "Why can't I?"

      "She's glad enough to talk to you now, but just you wait till Tom Grayson comes. If he should happen in to-night, what do you think would become of you?"

      "Maybe I'm not so dead in love as you think," he answered.

      "You? You're past hope. Your eyes go round the room after her like a sunflower twistin' its neck off to see the sun."

      "Pshaw!" said George. "You know better than that."

      But Virginia noted with amusement that his smile of affected indifference was rather a forced one, and that he was "swallowing his feelings," as she put it. He took her advice as soon as he dared and crossed to where Rachel was sitting with the back of her chair against the jamb of the mantel-piece. Rachel was smiling a little foolishly at the shameless palaver of Magill, who told her that there was a ravishing perfiction about her faychers that he'd niver sane surpassed, though he'd had the exquisite playsure of dancing with many of the most beautiful faymales in Europe. Rachel, a little sick of unwatered sweetness, was glad to have George Lockwood interrupt the frank criticisms of an appreciative connoisseur of loveliness.

      "I hear Tom Grayson outside now," said Mely McCord, in a half-whisper to Henry Miller. "George Lockwood won't be nowhere when he gits here"; and Mely's freckled face broke into ripples of delight at the evident annoyance which Lockwood began to show at hearing Grayson's voice on the porch. Tom Grayson was preceded by his sister Barbara, a rather petite figure, brunette in complexion, with a face that was interesting and intelligent, and that had an odd look hard to analyze, but which came perhaps, from a slight lack of symmetry. As a child, she had been called "cunning," in the popular American use of the word when applied to children; that is to say, piquantly interesting; and this characteristic of quaint piquancy of appearance she retained, now that she was a young woman of eighteen. Her brother Tom was a middle-sized, well-proportioned man, about two years older than she, of a fresh, vivacious countenance, and with a be-gone-dull-care look. He had a knack of imparting into any company something of his own cheerful heedlessness, and for this his society was prized. He spoke to everybody right cordially, and shook hands with all the company as though they had been his first cousins, looking in every face without reserve or suspicion, and he was greeted on all hands with a corresponding heartiness. But while Tom saluted everybody, his eye turned toward Rachel, and he made his way as quickly as possible to the farther corner of the room where she was standing in conversation with George Lockwood. He extended his hand to her with a hearty,

      "Well, Rache, how are you? It would cure fever and ague to see you"; and then turning to Lockwood he said: "Hello, George! you out here! I wouldn't 'ave thought there was any other fellow fool enough to ride five miles and back to get a look at Rachel but me." And at that he laughed, not a laugh that had any derision in it, or any defiance, only the outbreaking of animal spirits that were unchecked by foreboding or care.

      "I say, George," he went on, "let's go out and fight a duel and have it over. There's no chance for any of us here till Rachel's beaux are thinned out a little. If I should get you killed off and out of the way, I suppose I should have to take Mr. Magill next."

      "No, Tom, it's not with me you'd foight, me boy. I've sane too many handsome girls to fight over them, though I have never sane such transcindent – "

      "Ah, hush now, Mr. Magill," entreated Rachel.

      "Faymale beauty's always adorned by modesty, Miss Albaugh. I'll only add, that whoever Miss Rachel stoops to marry" – and Magill laughed a slow, complacent laugh as he put an emphasis on stoops – "I'll be a thorn in his soide, d'yeh mark that; fer to the day of me death, I'll be her most devoted admoirer"; and he made a half-bow at the close of his speech, with a quick recovery, which expressed his sense of the formidable character of his own personal charms.

      But if Magill was a connoisseur of beauty he was also a politician too prudent to slight any one. He was soon after this paying the closest heed to Mely McCord's very spontaneous talk. He had selected Mely in order that he might not get a reputation for being "stuck up."

      "Tom Grayson a'n't the leas' bit afeerd uh George Lockwood nur nobody else," said Mely rather confidentially to Magill, who stood with hands crossed under the tail of his blue-gray coat. "He all-ays wuz that away; a kind'v a high-headed, don't-keer sort uv a feller. He'd better luck out, though. Rache's one uh them skittish kind uh critters that don't stan' 'thout hitchin', an' weth a halter knot at that. Tom Grayson's not the fust feller that's felt shore she wuz his'n an' then found out kind uh suddently't 'e wuzn't so almighty shore arter all. But, lawsee gracious! Tom Grayson a'n't afeerd uv nothin', nohow. When the master wuz a-lickin' him wunst, at school, an' gin 'im three cuts, an'

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