"You're a farmer's daughter yourself," said Deering, as if they had been speaking of somebody else who was.
"Yes, my father was a farmer. I'm a teacher. I only began a little while ago to speak in the interest of the farmer. It seems to me that everybody is looking out for himself except the farmer, and I want to help him to help himself. I expect to speak in every county in the State this winter."
Bradley crept nearer. He was eager to hear what she was saying. He grew furtive in his manner, when she observed him, and he felt as if he were doing something criminal. He saw Miss Wilbur say something to Mr. Deering, who looked up a moment later and said to Bradley, whom he did not know, "Why, certainly, come and have some dinner, plenty of it."
Bradley flushed hot with shame and indignation, and moved away deeply humiliated. They had taken him for a poor, friendless, lonely tramp, and there was just enough truth in his loneliness to make it sting.
"Say, Brad, don't you want some grub?" called Councill, catching sight of him.
"Quick, 'r'y lose it," said Burns.
He sat down and fell upon the dinner silently, but there was a hot flush still upon his face. He was not a beau. It had always been difficult for him to address a marriageable woman, and a joke on that subject threw him into dumb confusion. He had lived a dozen tender dreams of which no one knew a word. Indeed, he never acknowledged them to himself. He had admired in this way Eileen Deering whom he had seen with Milton a few times during the year. He now envied Milton his easy air of calm self-possession in the presence of two such beautiful girls. There was a bitter feeling of rebellion in his heart.
Miss Wilbur had stirred his unexplored self. Down where ambitions are born; where aspirations rise like sun-shot mists, her words and the light of her face had gone. Already there was something sacred and ineffably sweet about her voice and face. She had come to him as the right woman comes sometimes to a man, and thereafter his whole life is changed.
He walked away from the few people he knew, and tried to interest himself in the games they were playing but he could not. He drifted back to the grand stand and sought about till he could see Miss Wilbur once more. She was so pure, so beautiful to him.
The hour or two after dinner was spent in visiting and getting acquainted, and the time seemed all too short. Each granger took this opportunity of inquiring after the health of the other grangers of the county. The young people wandered in laughing, romping groups about the grounds, buying peanuts and sugar candy, and drinking the soda water and lemonade which the venders called with strenuous enterprise.