"Wife!" remonstrated the old farmer, "you is sartingly loss yo'
senses! Don't ye know, when Mell's fine friends comes er long, we's
expected ter run inter er rat-hole or some udder hole? All the use
chillun has fer parients these days is ter keep 'em er going. Onst
Mrs. Rullan', Mell aint gwine ter know us by site! She aint no chile
er mine, no how, Mell aint!"

"Wall, now, she is yourn, I kin tell ye," cried Mrs. Creecy, flaring
up, very much to the enjoyment of her liege lord.

The daughter turned off in disgust. Her father's pleasantries were the
least pleasant of all his disagreeable ways. A coarse man's humor is
apt to be the coarsest thing about him.

It was under very different auspices from those of her day dreams,
that Mell, after a few days of busy preparation, was admitted into the
sacred precincts of the social hierarchy.

Jerome was to have been the founder of her greatness, her steersman in
these unknown waters--not Rube.

None in this higher realm welcomed her more graciously than Clara.
Clara had high views of philosophy, but only one maxim: "See how the
hare runs, hear how the owl cries, accept the inevitable, and get all
you can out of it."

Jerome returned from Cragmore the day following her own domestication
into this new sphere of existence. How strange it all seemed, and how
unnatural! How strange he should find her there, and with so good a
right to be there! Surely years have intervened since those lovely
mornings in the meadow, when Sukey cropped the dew-wet grass, and she
sat on the old tree-stump and Jerome lay at her feet.

Surely long, long years!

So long that Jerome has forgotten all about them--and her. She is now
to him only Miss Creecy, the prospective wife of his nearest friend,
the prospective mistress of the Bigge House, and not attractive, it
would appear, in these new surroundings. Others, very likely, did not
notice how he never spoke to her, if he could help it; how he never
looked at her, if he could help it; how they kept far apart, as far as
the East is from the West, though sleeping under the same roof, and
eating at the same table, and constantly together morning, noon, and
night. Others did not notice all these things, but Mell did.

"He despises me," sobbed Mell in the darkness of her own chamber,
smothering her sobs in her own pillow. "Once he loved, and now he
despises me!"

Better go to sleep, Mell; tears cannot wash away stern facts, and what
good would