his two older daughters had taught him the perfect uselessness of
trying to marry them to suit himself or his wife.

He was annoyed at this attack of Bradley upon him and his brother, the
treasurer. It was really carrying things too far. Accustomed to all
sorts of epithets and charges on the part of opposing candidates, he
ought not to have been so sensitive to Bradley's charge, but the case
was peculiar. It was exactly true, in the first place, and then it came
from a young man whom his daughter had brought into the family, and
whom he had begun to think of as a probable son-in-law.

On Tuesday morning, just as Bradley was tumbling his dishes into a pan
of hot water ("their weekly bath," Milton called it), there came a
sharp knock on the door, and a girl's voice called out clearly:

"Hello, Brad! Can I come in?"

"Yes, come in."

Nettie came in, her cheeks radiant with color, her eyes shining. "Oh,
washing your dishes? Wait a minute, I'll help." She flung off her coat
in a helter-skelter way, and rolled up her sleeves.

Bradley expostulated: "No, no! Don't do that! I'll have 'em done in a
jiffy. They aint but a few."

"I'll wipe 'em, anyway," she replied. "Oh, fun! What a towel!" she held
up the side of a flour-sack, on which was a firm-name in brown letters.
She laughed in high glee. There was a delicious suggestion in the fact
that she was standing by his side helping him in his household affairs.

Bradley was embarrassed, but she chattered away, oblivious of space and
time. Her regard for him had grown absolutely outspoken and without
shame. There was something primitive and savage in her frank confession
of her feelings. She had come to make all the advances herself, in a
confidence that was at once beautiful and pathetic. She met him in the
morning on the way to school, and clung to him at night, and made him
walk home with her. She came afternoons with a team, to take him out
driving. The presence of the whole town really made no difference to
her. She took his arm just the same, proud and happy that he permitted
it.

"Oh, say," she broke off suddenly, "pa wants to see you about
something. He wanted me to tell you to come down to-night." She was
dusting the floor at the moment, while he was moving the furniture. "I
wonder what he wants?" she asked.

"I don't know," he replied, evasively.

"Something about politics, I suppose." She came over and stood beside
him in silence. She was very girlish, in