Sister had begun school on the very first day it opened—in September. She was delighted, for although she had had “lessons” at the “institution”, they had not been like this regular attendance, with other free and happy children, at a good country school.  
Sister was growing not alone in body, but in mind. And the improvement in her appearance was something marvelous.
 
“It certainly does astonish me, every time I think o' that youngun and the way she looked when she come to me from the charity school,” declared Mother Atterson.
 
“Who'd want a better lookin' young'un now? She'd be the pride of any mother's heart, she'd be.
 
“If there's folks belongin' to her, and they have neglected her all these years, in my opinion they're lackin' in sense, Hiram.”
 
“They certainly have been lacking in the milk of human kindness,” admitted the young farmer.
 
“Huh! That milk's easily soured in many folks,” responded Mrs. Atterson. “But Sister's folks, whoever they be, will be sorry some day.”
 
“You don't suppose she really has any family, do you?” demanded Hiram.
 
“No father nor mother, I expect. But many a family will get rid of a young'un too small to be of any use, when they probably have many children of their own.
 
“And if there was a little bait of money coming to the child, as that lawyer told the institution matron, that would be another reason for losing her in this great world.”
 
“I'm afraid Sister will never find her folks, Mrs. Atterson,” said Hiram, shaking his head.
 
“Huh! If she don't, it's no loss to her. It's loss to them,” declared the old lady. “And I'd hate to have anybody come and take her away from us now.”
 
Sister no longer wore her short hair in four “pigtails”. She had learned to dress it neatly¹ like other girls of her age, and although it would never be like the beautiful blue-black tresses of Lettie Bronson, Hiram had to admit that the soft brown of Sister's hair, waving so prettily² over her forehead, made the girl's features more than a little attractive.
 
She was an entirely³ different person, too, from the one who had helped Lettie and her friends ashore⁴ from the grounded motor-boat that day, so long ago—and so Lettie herself thought when she rode into the Atterson yard one October day on her bay horse, and Sister met her on the porch.
 
“Why, you're Mrs. Atterson's girl, aren't you?” cried Lettie, leaning from her saddle to offer her hand to Sister. “I wouldn't have known you.”
 
Sister was getting plump, she had roses in her cheeks, and she wore a neat, whole, and becoming dress.
 
“You're Miss Bronson,” said Sister, gravely. “I wouldn't forget you.”
 
Perhaps there was something in what Sister said that stung Lettie Bronson's memory. She flushed a little; but then she smiled most charmingly and asked for Hiram.
 
“Husking corn, Miss, with Henry Pollock, down on the bottom-land.”
 
“Oh! way down there? Well! you tell him—Why, I'll want you to come, too,” laughed Lettie, quite at her best now.
 
Nobody could fail to answer Lettie Bronson's smile with its reflection, when she chose to exert herself in that direction.
 
“Why, I just came to tell you both that on Friday we're going to have an old-fashioned husking-bee for all the young folks of the neighborhood, at our place. You must come yourself—er—Sister, and tell Hiram to come, too.
 
“Seven o'clock, sharp, remember—and I'll be dreadfully disappointed if you don't come,” added Lettie, turning her horse's head homeward, and saying it with so much cordiality that her hearer's heart warmed.
 
“She is pretty,” mused⁵ Sister, watching the bay horse and its rider flying along the road. “I don't blame Hiram for thinking she's the very finest girl in these parts.
 
“She is,” declared Sister, emphatically, and shook herself.
 
Hiram had finished husking the lowland corn that day, with Henry's help, and it was all drawn⁶ in at night. When the last measured basket was heaped in the crib by lantern light, the young farmer added up the figures chalked up on the lintel of the door.
 
“For goodness' sake, Hiram! it isn't as much as that, is it?” gasped⁷ Henry, viewing the figures the young farmer wrote proudly in his memorandum⁸ book.
 
“Six acres—six hundred and eighty baskets of sound corn,” crowed “Hiram. And it's corn that is corn, as Mr. Bronson says.
 
“It's not quite as hard as the upland corn, for the growing season was not quite long enough for it; but it's better than the average in the county——”
 
“Three hundred and forty bushel of shelled corn from six acres?” cried Henry. “I should say it was! It's worth fifty cents now right at the crib—a hundred and seventy dollars. Hiram! that'll make dad let me go to the agricultural college.”
 
“What?” cried Hiram, surprised and pleased. “Have you really got that idea in your head?”
 
“I been gnawin' on it ever since you talked so last spring,” admitted his friend, rather shyly. “I told father, and at first he pooh-poohed.
 
“But I kept on pointing out to him how much more you knowed than we did—”
 
“That's nonsense, Henry,” interrupted Hiram. “Only about some things. I wouldn't want to set myself up over the farmers of this neighborhood as knowing so much.”
 
“Well, you've proved it. Dad says so himself. He was taken all aback when I showed him how you had beat him on the tomato crop. And I been talking to him about your corn.
 
“That hit father where he lived,” chuckled⁹ Henry, “for father's a corn-growing man—and always has been considered so in this county.
 
“He watched the way you tilled your crop, and he believed so much shallow cultivating was wrong, and said so. But he says you beat............