-stairs."

"He lets me," said August, when she had ended her speech and dropped her
sun-bonnet again out of the range of his eyes, which, in truth, were too
steadfast in their gaze. "I spend many evenings up-stairs." August had
just a trace of German in his idiom.

"What makes Uncle Andrew so curious, I wonder?"

"I don't exactly know. Some say he was treated not just right by a woman
when he was a young man. I don't know. He seems happy. I don't wonder a
man should be curious though when a woman that he loves treats him not
just right. Any way, if he loves her with all his heart, as I love Jule
Anderson!"

These last words came with an effort. And Julia just then remembered
her errand, and said, "I must hurry," and, with a country girl's
agility, she climbed over the fence before August could help her, and
gave him another look through her bonnet-telescope from the other Hide,
and then hastened on to return the tea, und to tell Mrs. Malcolm that
there was to be a Millerite preacher at the school-house on Sunday
night. And August found that his horses were quite cool, while he was
quite hot. He cleaned his mold board, and swung his plow round, and
then, with a "Whoa! haw!" and a pull upon the single line which Western
plowmen use to guide their horses, he drew the team into their place,
and set himself to watching the turning of the rich, fragrant black
earth. And even as he set his plowshare, so he set his purpose to
overcome all obstacles, and to marry Julia Anderson. With the same
steady, irresistible, onward course would he overcome all that lay
between him and the soul that shone out of the face that dwelt in the
bottom of the sun-bonnet.

From her covert in the elder-bushes Mrs. Anderson had seen the parley,
and her cheeks had also grown hot, but from a very different emotion.
She had not heard the words. She had seen the loitering girl and the
loitering plowboy, and she went back to the house vowing that she'd
"teach Jule Anderson how to spend her time talking to a Dutchman." And
yet the more she thought of it, the more she was satisfied that it
wasn't best to "make a fuss" just yet. She might hasten what she wanted
to prevent. For though Julia was obedient and mild in word, she was none
the less a little stubborn, and in a matter of this sort might take the
bit in her teeth.

And so Mrs. Anderson had recourse, as usual, to her husband. She knew
she could browbeat him. She demanded that August Wehle should