"All--all over? You mean Milla's going to be--to be married?"

"She already is," said Sadie. "They got married at her Aunt Jess and
Uncle Purv's house, up in Chicago, last Thursday. Yes, sir; that quiet
little Milla's a regular old married woman by this time, I expect,
Ramsey!"

When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one
predominating feeling remained: it was a gloomy pride--a pride in his
proven maturity. He was old enough, it appeared, to have been the same
thing as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman. His manner
thenceforth showed an added trace of seriousness and self-consideration.

Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely forgot
that moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum on the day
of his flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting in the classroom,
smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening
in the autumn, all his humility had long since vanished and she appeared
to him not otherwise than as the scholar whose complete proficiency had
always been so irksome to him.

"Look at her!" he muttered to himself. "Same ole Teacher's Pet!"

Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene progress
continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred within some
lingerings of the old determination to "show" her; and he would conjure
up a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while he led the laughter of
the spectators. But gradually his feelings about her came to be merely a
dull oppression. He was tired of having to look at her (as he stated it)
and he thanked the Lord that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd