dispensed with his coat in the warm June morning.  As he drew a chair noisily across the floor and sat down at the table, it was evident that he had a good though undeveloped face.  His upper lip was deeply shadowed by a coming event, to which he looked forward with no little pride, and his well-tanned cheeks could not hide a faint glow of youthful color.  One felt at a glance that his varying expressions could scarcely fail to reveal all that the young man was now or could ever become, for his face suggested a nature peculiarly frank and rather matter-of-fact, or at least unawakened.  The traits of careless good-nature and self-confidence were now most apparent.  He had always been regarded as a clever boy at home, and his rustic gallantry was well received by the farmers’ daughters in the neighborhood.  What better proofs that he was about right could a young fellow ask?  He was on such good terms with himself and the world that even the event which his father so deprecated did not much disturb his easy-going assurance.  He doubted, in his thoughts, whether the city girls would “turn up their noses” at him, and if they did, they might, for all that he cared, for there were plenty of rural beauties with whom he could console himself.  But, like his father, he felt that the careless undress and freedom of their farm life would be criticised by the new-comers.  He proposed, however, to make as little change as possible in his habits and dress, and to teach the Jocelyns that country people had “as good a right to their ways as city people to theirs.”  Therefore the threatened invasion did not in the least prevent him from making havoc in the substantial breakfast that Mrs. Atwood and her daughter Susan put on the table in a haphazard manner, taking it from the adjacent stove as fast as it was ready.  A stolid-looking hired man sat opposite to Roger, and shovelled in his food with his knife, with a monotonous assiduity that suggested a laborer filling a coal-bin.  He seemed oblivious to everything save the breakfast, and with the exception of heaping his plate from time to time he was ignored by the family.

The men-folk were quite well along with their meal before Mrs. Atwood and Susan, flushed with their labors about the stove, were ready to sit down.  They were accustomed to hear the farmer grumble, and, having carried their point, were in no haste to reply or to fight over a battle that had been won already.  Roger led to a slight resumption of hostilities, however, by a disposition—­well-nigh universal in brothers—­to tease.

“Sue,” he said, “will soon be wanting to get some feathers like those of the fine birds that will light in our door-yard this evening.”

“That’s it,” snarled the farmer; “what little you make will soon be on your backs or streamin’ away in ribbons.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Atwood, a little sharply, “it’s quite proper that we should have something on our backs, and if we earn the money to put it there ourselves, I don’t see why you should complain; as for ribbons, Sue has as good right to ’em as Roger to a span-new buggy that ain’t good for anything but taking girls out in.”