d livin',
I'd like to be the one they sent for all round this part of the country
when they wanted first-rate playin'; an' I'd be ready, you know, and
just make the old fiddle squeak lovely for dancin' or set pieces for
weddings an' any occasions that might rise. I'd like to be _the_ player,
an' I tell ye I'm goin' to be 'fore I die. Marm she knows I can, but one
spell she used to expect 't would draw me into bad company."

"Oh you wouldn't let it, I'm sure, Seth," agreed Betty, with pleasing
confidence. "I like to hear you play now," she said. "I wish we could
get you a teacher. Perhaps papa can tell you, and--well, we'll see."

"I'd just like to have you see marm," said Seth shyly as they drove to
the mill door. "She'd like you an' you'd like her. I don't suppose your
aunts would let you go up-country, would they? It's pretty up there;
mountains, an' cleared pastur's way up their sides higher 'n you'd git
in an afternoon. You can see way down here right from our house," he
whispered, as they stopped before the mill, door.

Betty thought it was very pleasant in the old mill. While Seth and the
miller were transacting their business, she went to one of the little
windows on the side next the swift rushing mill-stream and looked out
awhile, and watched some swallows and the clear water and the house on
the other side where the miller lived. Then she was shown how the corn
was ground and tasted the hot meal as it came sifting down from the
little boxes on the band, and the miller even had the big wheel stopped
in its dripping dark closet where it seemed to labor hard to keep the
mill going. "Something works hard for us in our lives to make them all
come right," she thought with wistful gratitude, and looked with new
interest at the busy maze of wheels and hoppers and rude machinery that
joggled on steadily from the touch of the hidden wheel and the plash of
its live water. She wandered out into the sunshine and down the river
side a little way. There was a clean yellow sandy bottom in one place
with shoals of frisky little minnows and a small green island only a
little way out, and Betty was much tempted to take off her shoes and
stockings and wade across. Her toes curled themselves in their shoes
with pleased anticipation, but she thought with a sigh that she was too
tall to go wading now, that is, near a public place like the mill. It
was impossible not to give a heavy sigh over such lost delights. Then
she looked up