CHAPTER IV.
They were now in the hayfield, and a boy of about sixteen, but, like most country lads, to appearance much younger than he was, looked up from his rake, with lively blue eyes beaming forth under a profusion of brown curly hair.
Leonard Fairfield was indeed a very handsome boy,--not so stout nor so ruddy as one would choose for the ideal of rustic beauty, nor yet so delicate in limb and keen in expression as are those children of cities, in whom the mind is cultivated at the expense of the body; but still he had the health of the country in his cheeks, and was not without the grace of the city in his compact figure and easy movements.

There was in his physiognomy something interesting from its peculiar character of innocence and simplicity.

You could see that he had been brought up by a woman, and much apart from familiar contact with other children; and such intelligence as was yet developed in him was not ripened by the jokes and cuffs of his coevals, but fostered by decorous lecturings from his elders, and good-little-boy maxims in good-little-boy books.
PARSON.--"Come hither, Lenny.

You know the benefit of school, I see: it can teach you nothing better than to be a support to your mother." LENNY (looking down sheepishly, and with a heightened glow over his face).--"Please, sir, that may come one of these days." PARSON.--"That's right, Lenny.

Let me see! why, you must be nearly a man.