There was a proud toss of the lady’s head as she thanked him and said he was very kind, but there was no need for him to stay on her account, as she had friends and was accustomed to manage her own affairs. “Well, I guess then I’ll go to-night,” the deacon said, with a faint glimmering that “his room was better than his company,” and bidding the lady good-by, he started for The 4 Corners, which he reached two weeks after he left them. It was like a journey round the world, that trip to St. Augustine and New York, and he talked of it for days, his voice trembling as he spoke of Colonel Elliott, and his manner becoming eloquent when he told them of Connie and described Mrs. Hart’s beautiful home and the number of servants employed. “I didn’t s’pose anybody but the Queen lived that way; did you, Hal?” Kenneth said. “Pshaw! yes. That’s nothing, and it’s the way I mean to live some time,” Harry answered, with the air of superior knowledge which always made Kenneth feel small and ignorant. On one point they were agreed, and that was Connie, the little girl who was soon coming to visit them. Mrs. Stannard hoped she would stay a long time, and in her mind were visions of the little room next her own and the little bed she would fit up for her, while Kenneth thought of the sled he had seen in Millville and on which he would take her up and down the long hill and out upon the pond and everywhere. Harry thought of nothing except that it would be rather nice to have a little girl in the house, especially as she belonged to a swell family and had money. He was always thinking of money and swell people, and boasting of the Morrises, who belonged to that class. “Bred in his bone; takes it from his father, the proudest man I ever saw,” was Mrs. Stannard’s explanation, when her husband wondered where Hal got such notions. For a time he was quite interested in Connie and her expected visit with her aunt. “Mrs. Hart can’t fail to see that I am a kick above the rest of ’em here, and I shall tell her who father was,” he thought, while Kenneth was planning how he could make it pleasant for the little girl. It was decided at last that she was not to come that winter, and Kenneth, who had bought the sled at a reduced rate, put it away in the garret and began to plan for the summer, when the country would be so pleasant and the pond lilies so thick, and Hal would take her out in his boat and he would make her a swing in the barn and a _teater_ in the fence.