people's atmosphere is like recovering the use of a lung a person had
temporarily lost; breathing improves. I've always breathed easily in
Sam's friendship. That was why I could dance with him as I did even up
to the last bar of the music. Then he swung me out through one of the
long windows on to the porch under the dusky spring starlight.

"I hate to tell you, Betty, though I have walked a five-mile blister on
my left heel in these dancing-shoes just to break the news to you," Sam
answered my repeated demand to be told his "worse."

"Oh, Sam, a real blister?" I exclaimed, losing sight of the threatened
catastrophe at the thought of his blistered heel. I knew how tender
Sam's feet were, for I had doctored them since infancy. I used to pay
tribute in the form of apples and tea-cakes for the privilege of binding
up his ten and twelve year old wounded toes, and I suppose I hadn't
really got over my liking for thus operating.

"Oh, not all from the walk," answered Sam, as he smiled down on me
consolingly. "I've got a brand-new mule and I nearly plowed him and
myself to death to-day. I don't seem to be well heeled enough to plow
and dance both."

"What did you plow, Sam?" I came close up to his shoulder so that the
bit of woods in his buttonhole grazed my cheek as my head drooped with
an embarrassed hope.

"I plowed for the early potatoes on the south slope and--and--"

"And what?"