's in
my eyes smuggin them up.

Jim Russell is offel good to go to town he doesn't seem to mind it a
bit. Once I said I wisht I'd told Camilla to remind Jimmy to spit on
his warts every day--he's offell careless, and Jim said he'd tell
Camilla, and he often asks me if I want to tell Camilla anything, and
it's away out of his rode to go round to Mrs. Francis house too. I like
Jim you bet.

CHAPTER XX

TOM'S NEW VIEWPOINT

Pearl was quite disappointed in Tom's appearance the morning after the
party. Egbert always wore a glorified countenance after he had seen
Edythe; but Tom looked sleepy and somewhat cross.

He went to his work discontentedly. His mother's moroseness annoyed
him. His father's hard face had never looked so forbidding to him as it
did that morning. Mrs. Slater's hearty welcome, her good-natured
motherly smiles, Mr. Slater's genial and kindly ways, contrasted
sharply with his own home life, and it rankled in him.

"It's dead easy for them Slater boys to be smart and good, too," he
thought bitterly; "they are brought right up to it. They may not have
much money, but look at the fun they have. George and Fred will be off
to college soon, and it must be fun in the city,--they're dressed up
all the time, ridin' round on street cars, and with no chores to do."

The trees on the poplar bluff where he had made his toilet the evening
before were beginning to show the approach of autumn, although there
had been no frost. Pale yellow and rust coloured against the green of
their hardier neighbours, they rippled their coin-like leaves in glad
good-will as he drove past them on his way to the hayfield.

The sun had risen red and angry, giving to every cloud in the sky a
facing of gold, and long streamers shot up into the blue of the
mid-heaven.

There is no hour of the day so hushed and beautiful as the early
morning, when the day is young, fresh from the hand of God. It is a new
page, clean and white and pure, and the angel is saying unto us
"Write!" and none there be who may refuse to obey. It may be gracious
deeds and kindly words that we write upon it in letters of gold, or it
may be that we blot and blur it with evil thoughts and stain it with
unworthy actions, but write we must!

The demon of discontent laid hold on Tom that morning as he worked in
the hayfield. New forces were at work in the boy's heart, forces mighty
for good or evil.

A great disgust for his surrounding filled him. He could s