TTING ACQUAINTED.

In came Mrs. Mayfield and her nephew, with Jim, the preacher, following
them. Margaret began industriously to dust a rocking chair. She bade
them come in, if it were not too warm, "Mammy has been ironing but the
fire's dyin' down. And I do hope she irons yo' clothes to suit you, Miz
Mayfield," she added.

"Oh, yes," replied Mrs. Mayfield, glancing round at the preacher who
with hat in hand sat on the melodeon stool, gazing at her. "I am not
hard to please," she continued, speaking to Margaret. "I have passed
that stage."

Margaret bowed to her. "Well, I'm mighty glad to hear it. So many folks
are hard to please. There come a woman from away off yander sometime ago
and took up over at Fetterson's and they couldn't do a thing to please
her--grumbled all the time; the water wasn't even good, when heaven
knows we've got the best water on the yeth. So I am glad you ain't hard
to please."

"Oh, I should indeed be finical to find fault with anything in this
delicious air," said Mrs. Mayfield, smiling at Lou, "this new life,
among these God-worshipping hills, these--"

"Oh, auntie brought her romance with her," Tom broke in, and Lou gave
him a look of tender reproof.

"Oh, let her talk, please. I like to hear her." And standing beside Mrs.
Mayfield's chair she said: "You told me you were something. What was
it?"

"An echo from the world," the city woman answered.

Lou looked at her mother who in turn gave her a look in which the girl
read an ignorance as profound as her own. "Well, is sounds mighty
putty," she said, "but what do you mean by it. I don't understand."

"Why Lou!" exclaimed her mother. "You musn't talk that way."

"Oh, let her go ahead," Tom spoke up. "The fact is auntie says a good
many things I'd like to have explained to me."

"Tom," she said, "please don't be any more wayward than you can help."

At this moment old Jasper's voice was heard without. "Git down from
here. Got less sense than any dog I ever seed, come a jumpin' on me with
yo' muddy feet. Howdy everybody, howdy," he greeted them as he entered,
with a set of harness on his arm. Every one spoke to him and after
surveying the party he drew a chair out from the table, sat down and
began to tug at the harness, pulling hard against the resistance of a
rusty buckle. "Whar's that luther string?" he inquired of his wife.

"What luther string?"

"The one I told you to put away for me some time last fall--mebby fall a
yea