interesting to talk about, I wish you'd keep still."

Sally Gray pushed back the lock of crinkly brown hair that was always
getting in her eyes, puckered her lips a little, and glanced at her
brother Austin without replying, but with a slight ripple of concern
disturbing her usual calm. She was plain and plump and placid, as sweet
and wholesome as clover, and as nerveless as a cow, and she secretly
envied her brother's lean, dark handsomeness; but she was conscious of a
little pang of regret that the young, eager face beside her was already
becoming furrowed with lines of discontent and bitterness, and that the
expression of the fine mouth was rapidly growing more and more hard and
sullen. Austin had been all the way from Hamstead to White Water that
day, stopping on his way back at Wallacetown, to bring Sally, who taught
school there, home for over Sunday; his little old horse, never either
strong or swift, was tired and hot and muddy, and hung its unkempt head
dejectedly, apparently having lost all willingness to drag the
dilapidated top-buggy and its two occupants another step. Austin's
manner, Sally reflected, was not much more cheerful than that of his
horse; while his clothes were certainly as dirty, as shabby, and as
out-of-date as the rest of his equipage.

"It's a shame," she thought, "that Austin takes everything so hard. The
rest of us don't mind half so much. If he could only have a little bit of
encouragement and help--something that would make him really happy! If he
could earn some money--or find out that, after all, money isn't
everything--or fall in love with some nice girl--" She checked herself,
blushing and sighing. The blush was occasioned by her own quiet happiness
in that direction; but the sigh was because Austin, though he was well
known to have been "rather wild," never paid any "nice girl" the
slightest attention, and jeered cynically at the mere suggestion that he