Dave was his mother's idol, but his utter lack of worldliness, his
inability to drive a shrewd bargain sometimes annoyed his father, who was
a just, but an undeniably hard man, who demanded a hundred cents for his
dollar every day in the year.

Kate, whom the family circle hoped would one day be David's wife, was all
blonde hair, blue eyes and high spirits, so that the little blind god,
aided by the Squire's strategy, propinquity and the universal law of the
attraction of opposites, should have had no difficulty in making these
young people fall in love--but Destiny, apparently, decided to make them
exceptions to all rules.

Kate was fond of going to Boston to visit a schoolmate, and the Squire,
who looked with small favor on these visits, was disposed to attribute
them to Dave's lack of ardor.

"Confound it, Looizy," he would say to his wife, "if Dave made it more
lively for Kate she would not be fer flying off to Boston every time she
got a chance."

And Mrs. Bartlett had no answer. Having a woman's doubtful gift of
intuition, she was afraid that the wedding would never take place, and
also having a woman's tact she never annoyed her husband by saying so.

Kate, who had been in Boston for two months, was coming home about the
middle of July, and a little flutter of preparation went all over the
farm.

Dave had said at breakfast that he regretted not being able to go to
Wakefield to meet Kate, but that he would be busy in the north field all