Nevertheless, as Miss Long went about her duties she was watching eagerly for Mr. Wilmott's buggy. It was not for the reasons why a maiden usually looks for her lover, but because Davy Munn and the oldest orphan were sitting on the sidewalk at the doctor's gate, with mischievous designs upon her middle-aged admirer. As she stood on the porch, shading her eyes from the slanting rays of the sun, Sawed-Off's buggy came whizzing down the street, and Miss Long modestly withdrew. Two or three of the earliest arrivals had already entered by the store door, and Mr. Wilmott soon joined them. He had safely passed Scylla and Charybdis at the doctor's gate, but a worse fate awaited him, for the Sawyer twins were there, and his youthful spirits proved so attractive that they appropriated him as their own, and kept him from even speaking to Ella Anne all evening. On practice nights the whole village gathered at the Longs', the company dividing itself into three parts. Ella Anne's friends assembled in the parlor, Mrs. Long received the mothers in the kitchen, and Silas entertained on the store veranda. The Elmbrook kitchen was a fine place to receive one's friends; it was not the tiny workshop now in fashion, but a big, roomy place, where the homemaker sacrificed to the household gods, with the stove a sort of shining high altar in the center, and the incense from the merry kettle curling up to the ceiling. The frequenters of the milkstand got on the nail-kegs and packing-boxes of the veranda, and discussed astronomy and enjoyed the music. It was a fine situation for studying the stars, for the house stood at the end of the village, opposite the school, and commanded a view of the pond and the valley and a great stretch of sky. The planet Mars, and its possible inhabitants, was under discussion when Spectacle John Cross came up the steps with a bundle of hymn-books under his arm. "Ye see," Silas was explaining, "it ain't one o' yer ordinary stars. Lord love ye! it's a 'igh sight better'n that. It's a planet, that's wot it is, like our own world, an' it keeps a-spinnin' 'round the sun like our earth, too." He ended up with a descriptive sweep of his arm, and gazed triumphantly at his enemy. "Did ye ever hear the likes o' such balderdash?" sneered Spectacle John, appealing to Jake Sawyer. Jake passed his hands, in some perplexity, over the youngest orphan's curls. "Most folks'll tell ye the same, John," he said, regarding his partner doubtfully. "The doctor, there, now--look at the eddication he's had!--an' he says the same." "It's my opinion," said the miller, "that the more book learnin' a man crams into his head the more common sense gets squeezed out. It stands to reason that there couldn't be room for everything unless his head was to swell like a punkin."