HER BROTHER'S SISTER.
i4T THINK you had better take a few weeks' trip down into
1 the country, Kenneth," said my mother at dinner. " I in-
tend to pay Uncle Henry a visit soon and you may as well
go along and rusticate for a month or so. You'll feel more like
getting down to your profession afterward."
" But," I protested, " it's such a slow-going, out-of-the-way
place. Why, I'm sure I'd die of stagnation within a week. I don't
believe I'd see a newspaper the whole time."
" Well," said father, " you'd enjoy the outing, anyhow.
There's no finer lake for small fishing, and no healthier and more
picturesque spot in the state than your uncle's place. Besides, the
sun and the air will do you good. You've actually grown pale
poring over your books."
To tell the truth, I had studied rather hard during my last few
months at college, in order that I might come out respectably
near the head of the class, and I wasn't sure but that my father
was right. More than that, I was an exceedingly obedient child,
and since the combined wills of my parents seemed bent upon my
outing, I calmly submitted. But in my mind I pictured at least
three endless weeks in a lonely village, where the general topic
of conversation would be the prospects of a good harvest, or the
probable winner of the grand prix at the county fair, or the latest
war news—a week old, of course—which would be brought up
and rehashed at every meal. Then there were visions of curious
bumpkins who would crowd about and ask all sorts of silly ques
tions about the city, its life, its pitfalls, its amusements, about col
lege, about everything, just as though one were a traveling ency
clopmdia created for their sole use and delectation. Also the pros
pect of three or four Sundays in the country, when one would be
compelled to ride to church in a rattling, creaking spring-wagon,
with " the folks," and sit in a hard, comfortless wooden pew for
an hour and a half, listening to the rambling and perhaps not too
erudite utterances of a circuit minister. These, and similar re
flections rose in my mind as I finished my dinner.