have set him at the potatoes, and Uncle Silas at the
dishes.

"I don't suppose any of you can guess why our hired man wanted to help
my cousin, Minta Glenwood Lovejoy, with the dishes. I couldn't, even
after I saw that he was so fond of the job, that he could hardly wait
until the supper was cleared away and it was ready for him. I used to
wonder how that young man, brought up in town, could take so to such
work, and then, after a while, I got to wondering why it took him and
Minty Glenwood, as we always called her, so long to get through.

[Illustration: UNCLE SILAS HAD GONE TO SLEEP WITH A POTATO IN HIS HAND]

"That was the first thing Aunt Melissy wondered, too. She generally knit
a little, after supper, and went to sleep over it, and would wake up
suddenly and look at the clock and begin to knit as fast as she could,
so we would not think she had been asleep. But one night she slept a
long time, and when she looked at the clock it was so late that she
said, 'Land's sakes, it's bedtime!' and she went over and shook Uncle
Silas, who had gone to sleep with a potato in his hand, and scolded him
to bed, and shook up the rest of us, and then noticed that Cousin Minty
and Winters were missing, and went straight to the kitchen door and
opened it, and found them sitting close together, and Winters holding
Cousin Minty's hand and telling her that unless she would set up
housekeeping with him he would go back to the city and lead a fearful
life; and Cousin Minty Lovejoy looking very scared.

"But she didn't look half as scared as she did when she saw Aunt
Melissy, nor the hired man, either. He had to make two trials before he
could get up, even after Aunt Melissy told him to, and Cousin Minty
Glenwood began to cry, and Aunt Melissy told her to go to bed at once,
and made a swing at her, and missed her, as she went by. She didn't
miss the hired man, though; and I guess he had something else to think
of besides Minty Glenwood and housekeeping, for a few minutes, anyway.

"Then Aunt Melissy Lovejoy told him he could take himself out of that
house, and not come back except for meals, and she said he could sleep
over in the shop, which was an old, leaky, broken stump of a tree where
we kept our garden tools. Then I happened to be sitting in the way, and
Aunt Melissy tripped over my feet, and when she righted herself she made
a swing at me, too; and if I had not dodged in time I might have been
injured for life. As it was, she