et!" cried one of them--and her voice reached Hiram's ears
quite plainly. "You do have the queerest friends. Why did you stop to
speak to that yokel?"

"Hush! he'll hear you," said Miss Bronson; yet she smiled, too. "So you
think Hiram is a yokel, do you?"

"Hiram!" repeated her friend. "Goodness me! I should think the name was
enough. And those boots--and overalls!"

"Well," said Lettie, still amused, "I've seen my own father in just such
a costume. And you know very well that he is a pretty good looking man,
dressed up."

"But Let! your father's never a farmer$" gasped the other girl.

"Why not?"

"Oh, she's just joking us," laughed the third girl. "Of course he's a
farmer--he owns half a dozen farms. But he's the kind of a farmer who
rides around in his automobile and looks over his crops."

"Well, and this young man may do that--in time," said Lettie. "At least,
my father believes Hi is aimed that way."

"Nonsense!"

"He doesn't look as though he had a cent," said the third girl.

"He is putting away more money of his very own in the bank than any boy
we know, who works. Father says so," declared Lettie. "He says Hi has
done wonderfully well with his crops this year--and he is only raising
them on shares.

"Let me tell you, girls, the farmer is coming into his own, these
days. That is a great saying of father's. He believes that the man
who produces the food-stuffs for the rest of the world should have a
satisfactory share of the proceeds of their sale. And that is coming,
father says.

"Farmers don't have to half starve, and be burdened by mortgages and
ignorance, any longer. The country sections are waking up. With good
schools and good roads, and the grange, and all, many rural districts
are already ahead of the cities in the things worth while."

"Listen to Let lecture!" sniffed one of her friends.

"All right. You wait. Maybe you'll see that same young fellow--Hi
Strong--come through this town in his own auto before you graduate from
St. Beris."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed the other. "If I do I'll ask him for a ride," and the
discussion ended in a laugh.

Perhaps, however, had Hiram heard all Lettie had said he would not have
been so doubtful in regard to fulfilling his promise about taking dinner
with Mr. Bronson and his daughter on Saturday evening.

To tell the truth, the more he thought of it, the more he shrank from
the ordeal. Once he had hoped Mr. Bronson would be the one to show him
the w