Main-Travelled Roads. Garland Hamlin

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      "You?" laughed one of the others. "Anybody knows if a girl so much as looked crossways at you, you'd fall in a fit."

      "Another thing," said David. "I can't have you fellers carryin' grain goin' to the house every minute for fried cakes or cookies."

       "Now you git out," said Bill Young from the straw pile. "You ain't goin' to have all the fun to yerself."

      Will's blood began to grow hot in his face. If Bill had said much more, or mentioned Agnes by name, he would have silenced him. To have this rough joking come so close upon the holiest and most exquisite evening of his life was horrible. It was not the words they said, but the tones they used, that vulgarized it all. He breathed a sigh of relief when the sound of the machine began again.

      This jesting made him more wary, and when the call for dinner sounded and he knew he was going to see her, he shrank from it. He took no part in the race of the dust-blackened, half-famished men to get at the washing-place first. He took no part in the scurry to get seats at the first table.

      Threshing-time was always a season of great trial to the housewife. To have a dozen men with the appetites of dragons to cook for, in addition to their other everyday duties, was no small task for a couple of women. Preparations usually began the night before with a raid on a hen-roost, for "biled chickun" formed the pièce de resistance of the dinner. The table, enlarged by boards, filled the sitting room. Extra seats were made out of planks placed on chairs, and dishes were borrowed from neighbors, who came for such aid in their turn.

      Sometimes the neighboring women came in to help; but Agnes and her mother were determined to manage the job alone this year, and so the girl, in a neat dark dress, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed with the work, received the men as they came in, dusty, coatless, with grime behind their ears, but a jolly good smile on every face.

      Most of them were farmers of the neighborhood, and her schoolmates. The only one she shrank from was Bill Young, with his hard, glittering eyes and red, sordid face. She received their jokes, their noise, with a silent smile which showed her even teeth and dimpled her round cheek. "She was good for sore eyes," as one of the fellows said to Shep. She seemed deliciously sweet and dainty to these roughly dressed fellows.

      They ranged along the table with a great deal of noise, boots thumping, squeaking, knives and forks rattling, voices bellowing out.

      "Now hold on, Steve! Can't hev yeh so near that chickun!"

      "Move along, Shep! I want to be next to the kitchen door! I won't get nothin' with you on that side o' me."

      "Oh, that's too thin! I see what you're—"

      "No, I won't need any sugar, if you just smile into it." This from gallant David, greeted with roars of laughter.

      "Now, Dave, s'pose your wife 'ud hear o' that?"

      "She'd snatch 'im bald-headed, that's what she'd do."

      "Say, somebody drive that ceow down this way," said Bill.

      "Don't get off that drive! It's too old," criticised Shep, passing the milk-jug.

      Potatoes were seized, cut in halves, sopped in gravy, and taken one, two! Corn cakes went into great jaws like coal into a steam-engine. Knives in the right hand cut meat and scooped gravy up. Great, muscular, grimy, but wholesome fellows they were, feeding like ancient Norse, and capable of working like demons. They were deep in the process, half-hidden by steam from the potatoes and stew, in less than sixty seconds after their entrance.

      With a shrinking from the comments of the others upon his regard for Agnes, Will assumed a reserved and almost haughty air toward his fellow-workmen, and a curious coldness toward her. As he went in, she came forward smiling brightly.

      "There's one more place, Will." A tender, involuntary droop in her voice betrayed her, and Will felt a wave of hot blood surge over him as the rest roared.

      "Ha, ha! Oh, there'd be a place for him!"

      "Don't worry, Will! Always room for you here!"

      Will took his seat with a sudden, angry flame.

      "Why can't she keep it from these fools?" was his thought. He didn't even thank her for showing him the chair.

      She flushed vividly, but smiled back. She was so proud and happy she didn't care very much if they did know it. But as Will looked at her with that quick, angry glance, she was hurt and puzzled. She redoubled her exertions to please him, and by so doing added to the amusement of the crowd that gnawed chicken-bones, rattled cups, knives, and forks, and joked as they ate with small grace and no material loss of time.

       Will remained silent through it all, eating his potato, in marked contrast to the others, with his fork instead of his knife, and drinking his tea from his cup rather than from his saucer—"finnickies" which did not escape the notice of the girl nor the sharp eyes of the other workmen.

      "See that? That's the way we do down to the Sem! See? Fork for pie in yer right hand! Hey? I can't do it? Watch me."

      When Agnes leaned over to say, "Won't you have some more tea, Will?" they nudged each other and grinned. "Aha! What did I tell you?"

      Agnes saw at last that for some reason Will didn't want her to show her regard for him—that he was ashamed of it in some way, and she was wounded. To cover it up, she resorted to the natural device of smiling and chatting with the others. She asked Ed if he wouldn't have another piece of pie.

      "I will—with a fork, please."

      "This is 'bout the only place you can use a fork," said Bill Young, anticipating a laugh by his own broad grin.

      "Oh, that's too old," said Shep Watson. "Don't drag that out agin. A man that'll eat seven taters—"

      "Shows who does the work."

      "Yes, with his jaws," put in Jim Wheelock, the driver.

      "If you'd put in a little more work with soap 'n water before comin' in to dinner, it 'ud be a religious idee," said David.

      "It ain't healthy to wash."

       "Well, you'll live forever, then."

      "He ain't washed his face sence I knew 'im."

      "Oh, that's a little too tough! He washes once a week," said Ed Kinney.

      "Back of his ears?" inquired David, who was munching a doughnut, his black eyes twinkling with fun.

      "Yep."

      "What's the cause of it?"

      "Dade says she won't kiss 'im if he don't."

      Everybody roared.

      "Good fer Dade! I wouldn't if I was in her place."

      Wheelock gripped a chicken-leg imperturbably, and left it bare as a toothpick with one or two bites at it. His face shone in two clean sections around his nose and mouth. Behind his ears the dirt lay undisturbed. The grease on his hands could not be washed off.

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