t pray. I knew God would understand.

And through it all there was Matthew! The first week or two he remonstrated
with me; then when he saw that I was possessed by the demon of work he just
rolled up his sleeves, collected Polly and Bud, and helped. He promoted his
best clerk in the office to a junior partnership, refused several important
cases, bought the hundred-acre forest which joins Elmnest, which Aunt Mary
had had in her family for generations, and which had been considered as
waste land after the cedars had been cut off, and began to restore it. He
never bothered me once in a sentimental way, and when he brought the plans
of his house over on the knoll opposite Elmnest, Polly helped me enthuse
and criticize them, and he went away seemingly content. His and Polly's
Rhode Island Reds were rivaling my Leghorns in productiveness, and all of
Riverfield seemed to have gone chicken mad. Mr. Spain traded a prize hog
for a cock, and twelve black Minorca hens, and Mr. Buford brought the bride
two settings of gray "Rocks" to start a college education for the bundle.

"Do you know what the whole kit and biling is so busy about?" said Aunt
Mary as she surveyed with pride a new hen-house that Bud had just finished,
in which I saw the trap nests over which she had disputed with the
commissioner of agriculture. "They were just woke up by that speech of
Adam's, and they are getting ready to show him what Riverfield can do when
he gets back. When did you say you expect him, honeybunch?"

"I don't," I answered quietly.

"Why, I thought Silas said you did," she answered absent-mindedly. "Now,
you can have Bud, but not for keeps, because as I borned him I think I am
entitled to work him." We all laughed as Bud and I betook ourselves and a
large farm-basket full of late cabbage plants across to Elmnest.

"Miss Ann, please ma'am, make mother let me go to town to-night with Mr.
Matthew and stay with Miss Bess. All her linen chest has come, and I want
to see it," Polly Corn-tassel waylaid us and pleaded. I went back and laid
the case before her mother.

"Well, I suppose it won't hurt her if all this marriage and giving in
marriage don't get into her head. I aim to keep and work her at least two
years longer to pay my trouble with her teething back," agreed Aunt Mary.
"When did you say the wedding was going to be?"

"June tenth," I answered.

"I heard that Mr. Owen Murray talking to Mr. Spain about his wooded piece
of land over by