"It's all wrong!" said Jim gently. "The farm ought to be the place for the best sort of career--I love the soil!" "I've been teaching for only two years, and they say I'll be nominated for county superintendent if I'll take it. Of course I won't--it seems silly--but if it were you, now, it would be a first step to a life that leads to something." "Mother and I can live on my wages--and the garden and chickens and the cow," said Jim. "After I received my teacher's certificate, I tried to work out some way of doing the same thing on a country teacher's wages. I couldn't. It doesn't seem right." Jim rose and after pacing back and forth sat down again, a little closer to Jennie. Jennie moved away to the extreme end of the bench, and the shrinking away of Jim as if he had been repelled by some sort of negative magnetism showed either sensitiveness or temper. "It seems as if it ought to be possible," said Jim, "for a man to do work on the farm, or in the rural schools, that would make him a livelihood. If he is only a field-hand, it ought to be possible for him to save money and buy a farm." "Pa's land is worth two hundred dollars an acre," said Jennie. "Six months of your wages for an acre--even if you lived on nothing." "No," he assented, "it can't be done. And the other thing can't, either. There ought to be such conditions that a teacher could make a living." "They do," said Jennie, "if they can live at home during vacations. _I_ do." "But a man teaching in the country ought to be able to marry." "Marry!" said Jennie, rather unfeelingly, I think. "_You_ marry!" Then after remaining silent for nearly a minute, she uttered the syllable--without the utterance of which this narrative would not have been written. "_You_ marry! Humph!" Jim Irwin rose from the bench tingling with the insult he found in her tone. They had been boy-and-girl sweethearts in the old days at the Woodruff schoolhouse down the road, and before the fateful time when Jennie went "off to school" and Jim began to support his mother. They had even kissed--and on Jim's side, lonely as was his life, cut off as it necessarily was from all companionship save that of his tiny home and his fellow-workers of the field, the tender little love-story was the sole romance of his life. Jennie's "Humph!" retired this romance from circulation, he felt. It showed contempt for the idea of his marrying. It relegated him to a sexless category with other defectives, and badged him with the celibacy of a sort of twentieth-century monk, without the honor of the priestly vocation. From another girl it would have been bad enough, but from Jennie Woodruff--and especially on that quiet summer night under the linden--it was insupportable. "Good night," said Jim--simply because he could not trust himself to say more.