In the afternoon I rode over to Fairview church, where Agnes was teaching the school, and although I half expected to find the building surrounded by young men on their knees with proposals of marriage, begging her to accept one of the number, and permit the others to drown their grief in the nearest deep water, only the smaller boys and girls were in attendance, the older ones being at home busy with the summer’s work. Agnes was prettier than ever, I thought, and although I knew the style had only reached Twin Mounds the week before, she wore a dress cut in what was then known as the “Princess” pattern. She greeted me with so much genuine pleasure that I was ashamed to acknowledge that I had been in the neighborhood since morning, and felt guilty that I had not driven directly to Fairview; and leading me through the rows of benches, she seated me in a chair in front of her rude desk, which the children had adorned with wild flowers. I sat there nearly an hour before school was dismissed, very uncomfortable from being looked at so steadily by the scholars. Two or three of The. Meek’s family, who had come on since I left Fairview, were there, and I readily picked them out by their white heads and good humor. I could tell who nearly all of them were by characteristics of one kind and another, though I did not know any of them, but there was one boy--evidently the son of a renter lately arrived, for I could not imagine who he was--who made me particularly uncomfortable by mimicking me when I was not looking. He created a great deal of merriment, I remember, by pasting his hair down on his forehead as mine was (I had visited the barber’s just before starting, and the barbers oiled and combed their customers’ hair then as they do now, for barbers never improve), and I caught him puffing at a pen-holder, intimating that in the community where I lived the cigar habit was evidently common. I wore a very flashy necktie, and he made one out of the back of a blue copy-book to represent it, which he pasted on his chin, then on his neck, and then on his breast. I thought of going out into the yard to get rid of him, but I knew the impudent boy would mimic my walk, and make me ridiculous again, so I stood it in silence until the children were called up in a row for the final spelling class, in which I was invited to participate, and where I triumphed over my enemy by correctly spelling all the words he missed. Then they all read a chapter in chorus from the Bible, and were dismissed. I was afraid the renter’s boy would stay around until I handed Agnes into the buggy, but he walked to the door in a manner which intimated that I was bow-legged, and disappeared with a whoop. After they had gone Agnes sat down at a desk near the door, where she had bid the last one good-bye, and looked at me curiously. “Are you glad to see me?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.