?"

"Up at the store." She smiled faintly. "You bought me a bag of pop-corn
once with a prize in it. It was a breastpin; I've got it yet."

Mr. Opp scowled slightly as he tried to extract an imaginary splinter
from his thumb. "Do you--er--attend school?" he asked, taking refuge in
a paternal attitude.

"I'm finished," she said listlessly. "I've been going to the Young
Ladies' Seminary at Coreyville."

"Didn't you taken to it?" asked Mr. Opp, wishing fervently that Mrs.
Gusty would return.

"Oh, yes," said his companion, earnestly. "I love it; I was a special. I
took music and botany and painting. I was in four concerts last year and
played in the double duets at the commencements." During the pause that
followed, Mr. Opp considered various names for his newspaper. "Mother
isn't going to let me go back," the soft, drawling voice continued; "she
says when a girl is nineteen she ought to settle down. She wants me to
get married."

Mr. Opp laid "The Cove Chronicle" and "The Weekly Bugle" aside for
further consideration, and inquired politely if there was any special
person whom Mrs. Gusty desired for a son-in-law.

"Oh, no," said the girl, indifferently; "she hasn't thought of anybody.
But I don't want to get married--yet. I want to go back to the seminary
and be a music teacher. I hate it here, every bit of it. It's so
stupid--and lonesome, and--"

A break in her voice caused Mr. Opp to postpone a decision of the day on
which his paper was to be published, and to give her his undivided
attention. Distress, even in beauty, was not to be withstood, and the
fact that she was unusually pretty had been annoying Mr. Opp ever since
she had spoken to him. As she turned her head away and wiped her eyes,
he rose impulsively and moved toward her:

"Say, look a-here now, you ain't crying, are you?" he asked.

She shook her head in indignant denial.

"Well--er--you don't seem exactly happy, as you might say," suggested
Mr. Opp, boldly.

"I'm not," she confessed, biting her lip. "I oughtn't to talk to you
about it, but there isn't anybody here that would understand. They think
I'm stuck up when I talk about books and music and--and other kind of
people. They just keep on doing the same stupid things till they get old
and die. Only mother won't even let me do stupid things; she says I
bother her when I try to help around the house."

"Can't you sew or make mottoes or something?" asked Mr. Opp, very vague
as to feminine a