At the house it was the same. While Hiram was cleaning the wagon and putting a bed of straw into it, and currying the horse and gearing him to the wagon, Mrs. Atterson brought a crock of cookies out upon the porch and talked with the girls from St. Beris. Sister had run indoors and changed her shabby and soiled frock for a new gingham; but when she came down to the porch, and stood bashfully in the doorway, none of the girls from town spoke to her. Hiram drove up with the farm-wagon. Most of the girls had accepted the adventure in the true spirit now, and they climbed into the wagon-bed on the clean straw with laughter and jokes. But nobody invited Sister to join the party. The orphan looked wistfully after the wagon as Hiram drove out of the yard. Then she turned, with trembling lip, to Mother Atterson: “She--she's awfully pretty,” she said, “and Hiram likes her. But she--they're all proud, and I guess they don't think much of folks like us, after all.” “Shucks, Sister! we're just good as they be, every bit,” returned Mrs. Atterson, bruskly. “I know; mebbe we be,” admitted Sister, slowly. “But it don't feel so.” And perhaps Hiram had some such thought, too, after he had driven the girls to the big boarding school in Scoville. For they all got out without even thanking him or bidding him good-bye--all save Lettie. “Really, we are a thousand times obliged to you, Hiram Strong,” she said, in her very best manner, and offering him her hand. “As the girls were my guests I felt I must get them home again safely--and you were indeed a friend in need.” But then she spoiled it utterly, by adding: “Now, how much do I owe you, Hiram?” and took out her purse. “Is two dollars enough?” This put Hiram right in his place. He saw plainly that, friendly as the Bronsons were, they did not look upon a common farm-boy as their equal--not in social matters, at least. “I could not take anything for doing a neighbor a favor, Miss Bronson,” said Hiram, quietly. “Thank you. Good-day.” Hiram drove back home feeling quite as depressed as Sister, perhaps. Finally he said to himself: “Well, some day I'll show 'em!” After that he put the matter out of his mind and refused to be troubled by thoughts of Lettie Bronson, or her attitude toward him. Spring was advancing apace now. Every day saw the development of bud, leaf and plant. Slowly the lowland was cleared and the brush and roots were heaped in great piles, ready for the torch. Hiram could not depend upon this six acres as their only piece of corn, however. There was the four-acre lot between the barnyard and the pasture in which he proposed to plant the staple crop. He drew out the remainder of the coarse manure and spread it upon this land, as far as it would go. For enriching the remainder of the corn crop he would have to depend upon a commercial fertilizer. He drew, too, a couple of tons of lime to be used on this corn land, and left it in heaps to slake.