He had gone, winter after winter, to the village school, and had a wide reputation among the villagers as a mathematician.
"It's pretty hard to fool Homer Wilson on figgers," was the general verdict.
He was too progressive to dream of spending his life in that little hamlet, so he saved all his earnings, and at last had enough to cover the low expenses of a two-year course at the business college—an institution which, among its numerous advantages, promised "to secure good situations for such of the students as shall obtain our diploma."
When Homer Wilson started from the village, he was a good specimen of the country Hercules; tall, sinewy, resolute, with unflinching will and bulldog courage. His conversion, if it had not sprung from his inmost soul or stirred the deepest depths of his heart, had at least awakened and strengthened his better resolutions; his mind was eager to receive the knowledge that he knew meant power. His hopes were high, his heart and temper generous.
He met Her shortly after he commenced his course. Her brother was attending the college and took Homer to his home one night. Homer thought her perfection, for his standard of comparison was not high. She had fluffy yellow hair, and pretty eyes, and pretty ways, and pretty speeches galore. She was winning and cordial, and he thought her absurd questions about country ways and country doings very entertaining. She was bright and quick and quite charmed this keen young man, who, for all his shrewdness, proved an easy prey to these trivial acts which girls of her caste exercise so unsparingly. He confided to her all his ambitions, and she listened eagerly.
Perhaps he gave her a rather too glowing account of the farm at home. The peaches and grapes were, perhaps, hardly so plentiful, and certainly were not so easily obtained. The harvests were, perhaps, not quite so golden, the garden perhaps not so lovely, as he depicted it, nor his father so admirable, nor his mother so benevolently kind to everybody. But he had left home for the first time, and, after all, despite his ambitions, his heart was yet in the country, with the fields, the sun, the birds and the trees.
Under these circumstances a man is prone to forget the tedious process of planting and nursing and cultivating the peach trees until they are fit for fruiting—to overlook the ploughing and sowing and harrowing, and the long days of toil before the fields "whiten to the harvest," and to think and speak of both fruit and grain as springing, with all the beauty of spontaneity, from the gracious Mother Earth. And his listener, if she be a selfish, shallow creature, unthinking and unheeding, is prone to think only of results, and not at all of the toil they represent.
So life slipped along with Homer Wilson, studying and loving and writing home. Then came a summer day when he took Her for a day's trip to his home in Jamestown. His mother had outdone herself preparing country dainties. It was the time of strawberries, and there were strawberries and cream, and strawberry shortcake, and crullers, and pies, and boiled ham, and the sun was shining, and She fluttered about, genuinely pleased with many things and affecting to be delighted by everything.
Old Mr. Wilson had been at his best. Mrs. Wilson was urbane in a new dress, and Homer strode about, showing Her the farm, erect and happily excited. It was the halcyon day of his life. In the evening there was the trip back to the city, Homer taking care of the basket of strawberries his mother had bestowed upon Her.
That night she promised to marry him. He wrote to his people, and his mother returned a somewhat unintentionally lugubrious epistle, conveying their good wishes and consent.