Belle soon formed his acquaintance, asking innumerable questions
and not a few favors, and she found him more good-natured than she
had been led to expect. At last, to her great delight, he took her
with him in his wagon to the post-office. The lively girl interested
and amused him, but he felt himself immeasurably older than she.
With a tendency common to very young men, he was more interested
in the elder sister, who in character and the maturity that comes
from experience was certainly far beyond him. Belle he understood,
but Mildred was a mystery, and she had also the advantage of being
a very beautiful one.

As time passed and no definite assurances came from her father,
the young girl was conscious of a growing dissatisfaction with the
idle, weary waiting to which she and her mother were condemned. She
felt that it might have been better for them all to have remained
in the city, in spite of the summer heat, than thus to be separated.
She believed that she might have found something to do which would
have aided in their support, and she understood more clearly than
her mother that their slender means were diminishing fast. That
she could do anything at a country farmhouse to assist her father
seemed very doubtful, but she felt the necessity of employment
more strongly each day, not only for the sake of the money it might
bring, but also as an antidote to a growing tendency to brood over
her deep disappointment. She soon began to recognize that such
self-indulgence would unfit her for a struggle that might be extended
and severe, and was not long in coming to the conclusion that she
must make the best of her life as it was and would be. Days and
weeks had slipped by and had seen her looking regretfully back at
the past, which was receding like the shores of a loved country to
an exile. Since the prospect of returning to it was so slight, it