efforts only, and often despondency; but occasionally there would
come a letter full of vague, sanguine hopes that first produced
elation and then perplexity that nothing came of them. His wife
found his dejection contagious. If she had been with him she would
have made strenuous efforts to cheer and inspirit, but without
an unselfish woman's strongest motive for action she brooded and
drooped. Belle's irrepressible vivacity and the children's wild
delight over the wonders of the fields and farmyard jarred upon
her sore heart painfully. She patiently tried to take care of them,
but in thought and feeling she could not enter into their life as
had been her custom. Belle was too young and giddy for responsibility,
and Mildred had many a weary chase after the little explorers. In
spite of his clearly defined policy of indifference, Roger found
himself watching her on such occasions with a growing interest. It
was evident to him that she did not in the slightest degree resent
his daily declaration of independence; indeed, he saw that she
scarcely gave him any thoughts whatever--that he was to her no more
than heavy-footed Jotham.

"She does not even consider me worth snubbing," he thought, with
much dissatisfaction, about a week subsequent to their arrival.

In vain, after the labors of the day, he dressed in his best
suit and sported a flaming necktie; in vain he dashed away in his
buggy, and, a little later, dashed by again with a rural belle at
his side. He found himself unable to impress the city girl as he
desired, or to awaken in her a sense of his importance. And yet he
already began to feel, in a vague way, that she was not so distant
TO him, as distant FROM him.