As we drove off I felt that the bright eyes of the girl were devouring my plain coat, for she sat directly behind me, and I regretted I had not thought to ask Jo to trim my hair that morning. The grease on my rough boots contrasted sharply with the polish of Mr. Shepherd’s patent leathers, and my great red hands were larger than his, which were very white, and shaped like a woman’s. I soon saw he was a poor driver, and asked him to give me the reins, which he willingly did, with a good-natured apology for his incapacity, pleading lack of experience in that direction. I knew they wanted to talk of Fairview and its people, but were shy of me, so I pretended to be busy in looking after the horses, but they said nothing except that there was a great number present, which was true, as the house was full. I pointed out the houses as we went along, and tried to be entertaining. “Old Lee lives there,” I said, as we passed the house of the renter on our farm. “He wasn’t at church to-day; he has probably gone over to the turkey roost in Bill’s Creek bottom.” I had said it to shock them, but they laughed very gayly over it, and the girl--I had heard them call her Mateel--said she presumed that wild turkeys were plentiful. I had secretly been longing to look at her, so I turned partly around, and replied that the woods were full of them. She was a very pretty girl, dressed more expensively than I had ever seen Agnes dressed, but not with so much taste. She was rather pale, too, and I could not help thinking that her health was not very good. “There’re deer here, too,” I said to them, finding that the subject promised to be amusing. Mr. Shepherd and the girl looked very much interested, but the minister’s wife was so stately and dignified that I felt sure I could never be comfortable in her presence. “One came running through our field once when Jo and I were ploughing,” I continued. “The folks were away at camp-meeting, and Jo took the gun and went after it. I heard him shoot after a long while, and then he came back, and said it was too heavy for him to carry home, but that if I would finish the land on which we were ploughing, while he rested, we would hitch to the wagon and go after it. I felt so pleased about it that I finished the work, and when I was through, he looked at the sun, and said we might as well eat supper before starting, and that I had better take the harness off the horses while they were feeding, as they would be more comfortable. At supper he asked me if under the circumstances I didn’t feel it a duty to give him my pie, which I did, and after he had eaten it, he took me to one side, and said that though he was ashamed of it himself, he was compelled to confess that he had missed.”