d from which he had been drinking,
in its place against the well-curb, and started back to the field, while
Cynthy Ann carried her bucket of water into the kitchen, blaming herself
for standing so long talking to Jonas. To Cynthy everything pleasant had
a flavor of sinfulness.

The pail of water was hardly set down in the sink when there came a
knock at the door, and Cynthy found standing by it the strapped
pantaloons, the "red-top" mustache, the watch-seals, and all the rest
that went to make up the new singing-master. He smiled when he saw her,
one of those smiles which are strictly limited to the lower half of the
face, and are wholly mechanical, as though certain strings inside were
pulled with malice aforethought and the mouth jerked out into a square
grin, such as an ingeniously-made automaton might display.

"Is Mr. Anderson in?"

"No, sir; he's gone to town."

"Is Mrs. Anderson in?"

And so he entered, and soon got into conversation with the lady of the
house, and despite the prejudice which she entertained for mustaches,
she soon came to like him. He smiled so artistically. He talked so
fluently. He humored all her whims, pitied all her complaints, and staid
to dinner, eating her best preserves with a graciousness that made Mrs.
Anderson feel how great was his condescension. For Mr. Humphreys, the
singing-master, had looked at the comely face of Julia, and looked over
Julia's shoulders at the broad acres beyond; and he thought that in
Clark township he had not met with so fine a landscape, so nice a
figure-piece. And with the quick eye of a man of the world, he had
measured Mrs. Anderson, and calculated on the ease with which he might
complete the picture to suit his taste.

He staid to supper. He smiled that same fascinating square smile on
Samuel Anderson, treated him as head of the house, talked glibly of
farming, and listened better than he talked. He gave no account of
himself, except by way of allusion. He would begin a sentence thus,
"When I was traveling in France with my poor dear mother," etc., from
which Mrs. Anderson gathered that he had been a devoted son, and then he
would relate how he had seen something curious "when he was dining at
the house of the American minister at Berlin." "This hazy air reminds me
of my native mountains in Northern New York." And then he would allude
to his study of music in the Conservatory in Leipsic. To plain country
people in an out-of-the-way Western neighbor