hot weather."

Carlia got another pail, and she and Dorian went back to the corral.

"Let me milk," offered Dorian.

"No; you're strange, and she'd kick you over the fence."

"O, I guess not," he remarked; but he let the girl finish her milking.
He again carried the milk back; he also took the "slop" to the pigs and
threw the hay to the horses, while the girl gave the new milk to the
butting calf; then back to the house where they strained the milk. Then
the young man was sent into the front room while the girl changed from
work to Sunday attire.

The front room was very hot and uncomfortable. The young man looked
about on the familiar scene. There were the same straight-backed chairs,
the same homemade carpet, more faded and threadbare than ever, the
same ugly enlarged photographs within their massive frames which the
enterprising agent had sold to Mrs. Duke. There was the same lack of
books or music or anything pretty or refined; and as Dorian stood and
looked about, there came to him more forcibly than ever the barrenness
of the room and of the house in general. True, his own home was very
humble, and yet there was an air of comfort and refinement about it. The
Duke home had always impressed him as being cold and cheerless and ugly.
There were no protecting porches, no lawn, no flowers, and the barn yard
had crept close up to the house. It was a place to work. The eating and
the sleeping were provided, so that work could be done, farm and kitchen
work with their dirt and litter. The father and the mother and the
daughter were slaves to work. Only in work did the parents companion