efore, had bought
the home farm, and was now working to pay his older brothers and sisters
for their shares in it and to comfortably support his mother in her
declining years.

"There are eighty acres in it, well improved, and with good buildings,"
he said one day, while unfolding his plans to Elvira, "and I think I can
make a good home of it, and a happy one, where I can feel independent,
and no one's servant, as I could not at any other business. Farming is a
profession, and I intend to work with my head as well as my hands, to
read and study on the subject, to take the best agricultural papers, and
keep up with the times. My fondness for ornithology and mineralogy can
be indulged in connection with my work on the farm and without in any
wise interfering with it."

In the winter he came occasionally to take her to lectures at
Sassafrasville or another neighboring town, and they always found food
for thought in what they heard, and pleasure in discussing it afterward.

The gossips said, "There's a match;" but it was not until spring that
they were engaged. Then he took her to see his mother, and showed her
the old home, the farm, and the improvements he was making. The old lady
received Elvira with mingled dignity and cordiality, but, finding her
interested in all she heard and saw, warmed toward her more and more,
and told much of her own life, unfolding the store of memories on which
her thoughts chiefly dwelt nowadays, talking of her husband, the
children she had lost, and bringing forth their pictures, opening closed
rooms, and showing dishes, linen, and other household goods which dated
back to her own girlhood and early married life.

Elvira felt an attachment for Mrs. Worth which deepened when, in the
ensuing autumn, her dear grandmother died after a brief illness, and
she experienced the loneliness of bereavement and homelessness. The
little brown house in Hill's Station was sold, and Elvira went to board
with one of the neighbors: she was still teaching in the village school.

When June came round again, with its beauty of earth and sky, it brought
her wedding-day. A very quiet wedding it was; but the home-coming, or
the "in-fare," to use a good old-fashioned word, was the occasion of
much joy and merry-making. It seemed as if all the Buck Creek
neighborhood had assembled to welcome the bride. Two of the farmers'
wives had been at the Worth homestead all the preceding day, and many of
them brought cakes w