t of
wild lamenting.

"'Sh, 'sh, deary!" her mother entreated. "He'll _hear_ you, and
then--"

"'Hazel Dell'?" the silly voice came from the parlor, with a sound of
fright in it. "I can sing it without the music." The piano keys
twittered the prelude and the voice sang:

"In the Hazel Dell my Nelly's sleeping,
Nelly loved so long!"

Wallace went forward and shut the door. "It's a shame to overhear
them! What are you going to do, you fellows?"

"I'm going to stay," Briggs said, "if it kills me. At least I will
till Minervy's married. _I_ don't care what the grub's like. I can
always get a bite at the restaurant."

"If anybody will pay up my back board, I'll stay, too," Blakeley
followed. "I should like to make a virtue of it, and, as things stand,
I can't."

"All right," Wallace said, and he went out and down the stairs. Then
from the dining-room below his heavy voice offering encouragement came
up, in terms which the others could not make out.

"I'll bet he's making her another advance," Blakeley whispered, as if
he might be overheard by Wallace.

"I wish _I_ could have made to do it," Briggs whispered back. "I feel
as mean as pursley. Would you like to kick me?"

"I don't see how that would do any good. I may want to borrow money of
you, and you can't ask a loan from a man you've kicked. Besides, I
think what you said may do her good."

IX

BREAKFAST IS MY BEST MEAL

I

Breakfast is my best meal, and I reckon it's always been
Ever since I was old enough to know what breakfast could mean.
I mind when we lived in the cabin out on the Illinoy,
Where father had took up a quarter-section when I was a boy,
I used to go for the cows as soon as it was light;
And when I started back home, before I come in sight,
I come in _smell_ of the cabin, where mother was frying the ham,
And boiling the coffee, that reached through the air like a mile o' ba'm,
'N' I bet you I didn't wait to see what it was that the dog
Thought he'd got under the stump or inside o' the hollow log!
But I made the old cows canter till their hoof-joints cracked--you know
That dry, funny kind of a noise that the cows make when they go--
And I never stopped to wash when I got to the cabin door;
I pulled up my chair and e't like I never had e't before.
And mother she set there and watched me eat