llows with whom she
had come in contact during the winter. Their impertinences had offended
her grievously at the time, but, woman-like, she permitted herself to
forget that now, in order to accentuate the deficiencies of the man whom
she was unwilling to think well of.

"My lands!" she reiterated to herself, with accumulated scorn, "but
_ain't_ he green? He--why, he wouldn't know a 'lectric car from a
waterin'-cart. An' _soft_, too, takin' all my sass 'thout givin' me no
lip back, no more 'n if I was his mother!"

But the young man presently broke in upon these unflattering
reflections. With a sigh he said slowly, as if half to himself,--

"Lands, but I used to set a powerful store by ye, Liz!"

He paused; and at that "used to" the girl opened her eyes with angry
apprehension. But he went on,--

"An' I set still more store by ye now, Liz, someways. Seems like I jest
couldn't live without ye. I always did feel as how ye was too good, a
sight too good, fer me, an' you so smart; an' now I feel it more 'n
ever, bein' 's ye've seen so much of the world like. But, Liz, I _don't_
allow as it's right an' proper fer even you to look down the way ye do
on the place ye was born in an' the folks ye was brung up with."

"My!" thought the girl to herself, "he's got some spunk, after all, to
git off such a speech as that, an' to rake me over the coals, too!"

But aloud she retorted, "Who's a-lookin' down on anybody, Jim-Ed
A'ki'son? An', anyways, _you_ ain't the whole of Wyer's Settlement, be
ye?"

The justice of this retort seemed to strike the young man with great
force.

"That's so," he acknowledged, gloomily. "'Course I ain't. An' I s'pose I
hadn't oughter said what I did."

Then he relapsed into silence. For half a mile he slouched on without a
syllable, save an occasional word of command addressed to the team.
Coming to another boggy bit of road, he seated himself dejectedly on the
cart, and apparently would not presume to again press unwelcome
assistance upon his fellow-way-farer. Quite uncertain whether to
interpret this action as excess of humility or as a severe rebuke, the
girl picked her way as best she could, flushed with a sense of injury.

When the mud was passed, the young man absent-mindedly, kept his seat.
Beginning to boil with indignation, the girl speedily lost her confident
superiority, and felt humiliated. She did not know exactly what to do.
She could not continue to walk humbly beside the cart. T