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“No; I never tried it before,” Albert was saying to Maud, at their end of the table. “Hartley offered me a job, and as I needed money, I came. I don’t know what he’s going to do with me, now I’m here.”

Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it was too cold. He had brought his books with him, planning to keep up with his class, if possible, and was deep in “Caesar” when a timid knock came upon the door.

“Come!” he called, student fashion,

Maud entered, her face aglow.

“How natural that sounds!” she said.

Albert sprang up to take the wood from her arms. “I wish you’d let me do that,” he said, pleadingly, as she refused his aid.

“I wasn’t sure you were in. Were you reading?”

“Caesar,” he replied, holding up the book. “I am conditioned on Latin. I’m going over the ‘Commentaries’ again.”

“I thought I knew the book,” she laughed.

“You read Latin?”

“Yes, a little–Vergil.”

“Maybe you can help me out on these oratia obliqua. They bother me yet. I hate these ‘Caesar saids.’ I like Vergil better.”

She stood at his shoulder while he pointed out the knotty passage. She read it easily, and he thanked her. It was amazing how well acquainted they felt after this.

The wind roared outside in the bare maples, and the fire boomed in its pent place within, but these young people had forgotten time and place. The girl sank into a chair almost unconsciously as they talked of Madison–a great city to them–of the Capitol building, of the splendid campus, of the lakes, and the gay sailing there in summer and ice-boating in winter.

“Oh, it makes me homesick!” cried the girl, with a deep sigh. “It was the happiest, sunniest time of all my life. Oh, those walks and talks! Those recitations in the dear, chalky old rooms! Oh, how I would like to go back over that hollow door-stone again!”

She broke off, with tears in her eyes, and he was obliged to cough two or three times before he could break the silence.

“I know just how you feel. The first spring when I went back on the farm it seemed as if I couldn’t stand it. I thought I’d go crazy. The days seemed forty-eight hours long. It was so lonesome, and so dreary on rainy days! But of course I expected to go back; that’s what kept me up. I don’t think I could have stood it if I hadn’t had hope.”

“I’ve given it up now,” she said, plaintively; “it’s no use hoping.”

“Why don’t you teach?” he asked, deeply affected by her voice and manner.

“I did teach here for a year, but I couldn’t endure the strain; I’m not very strong, and the boys were so rude. If I could teach in a seminary–teach Latin and English–I should be happy, I think. But I can’t leave mother now.”

She was a wholly different girl in Albert’s eyes as she said this. Her cheap dress, her check apron, could not hide the pure intellectual flame of her spirit. Her large, blue eyes were deep with thought, and the pale face, lighted by the glow of the fire, was as lovely as a rose. Almost before he knew it, he was telling her of his life.

“I don’t see how I endured it as long as I did,” he went on. “It was nothing but work, work, and dust or mud the whole year round; farm-life, especially on a dairy farm, is slavery.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “that is true. Father was a carpenter, and I’ve always lived here; but we have people who are farmers, and I know how it is with them.”

“Why, when I think of it now it makes me crawl! To think of getting up in the morning before daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores, to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y’r life on dirt. Waiting and tending on cows seven hundred times a year. Goin’ round and round in a circle, and never getting out. You needn’t talk to me of the poetry of a farmer’s life.”