h much disappointment, had to give up her
proposed visit for the time.

When Friday evening came, Elvira walked home to Hill's Station, feeling
that she had made a good beginning in her new work, and related to her
grandmother all the incidents of the week. On Saturday she went about
among the neighbors, who were most of them farmers, to see if she could
hire a horse for the summer. All the good horses, however, were in
constant use, and could not be spared by their owners. At last, one
farmer said that he had a horse which wasn't worth much at its best, and
just now had a sore head, so that he had put it out to pasture for the
summer on a farm several miles distant. She could have it to use, and be
welcome, if she would provide pasturage for it and give it now and then
a few ears of corn. Elvira accepted the offer gratefully, and he
promised to have it at Hill's Station for her by another Saturday. She
boarded at Sapp's another week, and after that rode from home every
morning and back every night. Her steed did not seem to have an arch or
curve in its whole body, but to be made up of straight lines and angles.
It reminded her of the corn-stalk horses she used to make when a little
girl. Its favorite gait was a slow walk, with its head in a drooping
dejected attitude, and sometimes it came to an entire stand-still, as if
it had reached its journey's end. When she was about to meet some one,
or heard wheels coming behind her, she tried to urge it into a spirited
trot, and to rein it in so that its neck would have some slight
appearance of a curve; but it only threw its nose into the air,
presenting a longer straight line than before, and, after trotting a
little way, it came to a sudden pause about the time the people passed
or met her. More than once she heard them laugh and felt her face burn.
If she had not known better days, she had at least known better horses,
and was aware that her steed presented a sorry appearance. The only time
it displayed any life was in the morning, when she came to catch and
saddle it. Then it trotted repeatedly around the pasture-lot,
occasionally sticking its head over the top rails, as if it had a notion
to jump the fence and run away. During the day it fed on the grass in
the school-house yard, and every day at noon she took it over to Sapp's,
drew water from their well, and gave it as many bucketfuls as it would
drink. Elvira carried her dinner, consisting generally of bread and
butte