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see how church members expressed themselves on any point whatever.) A suspicion entered his head. He looked at his friend meaningly.

"Is she ashamed of you bein' a teamster?"

"I hadn't thought of that," mused Abner. "Now, if she don't want to go with a teamster, she don't haff to."

When Nessie Sutton watched the teamsters go to their work, she ran back up the stairs to her room with an exquisite trembling in her breast. It was as if a mocking bird suddenly had begun carolling in her heart. As she went skipping down the long hall to her room she put a hand to her bosom for the sheer physical sweetness of the sensation there. She was so happy she could hardly go about the slight housekeeping duties in her room—sweeping and making her bed.

Abner was going to become a lawyer after exactly the romantic fashion of the novels. It would come about through her prayers and persuasions. After he had practised law for a year or two they would marry and live in a fine house near Lanesburg. Then Nessie's mind made an odd jump. She saw herself in this fine mansion with three children romping on the lawn; one was a boy with brown eyes like Abner's, and two were girls with blue eyes like her own. All biological necessities of bringing these children into the world her mind automatically skipped, but the bird of happiness warbled in her bosom again. She felt all her family would be intensely religious. Her children would kneel at her knees and pray.

In her heart Nessie was glad she was a country girl. She considered town girls more or less irreligious, selfish, and with their dancing, impure.

She had been neglected for a long time here in Irontown, but she had gone faithfully to church, Sunday school, and prayer meeting, and now God had blessed her with this great happiness, this breath-taking ecstasy!

As she whisked off her bedclothes, she began singing the gayest of the hymns she knew, "Let a Little Sunshine In."