enough. Of course you got to be sharper to be good and make money than
you got to be, to be mean and make money."

"Well, I know one thing, that Uncle ain't EVER going to make money.
He----" The last word shrivelled on her lips, which puckered into a
confused smile at the warning frown of her brother. The man that they
were discussing had come round to them past the henhouse. How much had
he overheard?

He didn't seem angry, anyhow. He called: "Well, Evy, ready?" and Eve was
glad to run into the house for her hat without looking at him. It was a
relief that she must sit on the back seat where she need not face Uncle
Nelson. Tim sat in front; but Tim was so stupid he wouldn't mind.

Nor did he; it was Nelson Forrest that stole furtive glances at the
lad's profile, the knitted brows, the freckled cheeks, the undecided
nose, and firm mouth.

The boyish shoulders slouched forward at the same angle as that of the
fifty-year-old shoulders beside him. Nelson, through long following of
the plough, had lost the erect carriage painfully acquired in the army.
He was a handsome man, whose fresh-colored skin gave him a perpetual
appearance of having just washed his face. The features were long and
delicate. The brown eyes had a liquid softness like the eyes of a woman.
In general the countenance was alertly intelligent; he looked younger
than his years; but this afternoon the lines about his mouth and in his
brows warranted every gray hair of his pointed short beard. There was a
reason. Nelson was having one of those searing flashes of insight that
do come occasionally to the most blindly hopeful souls. Nelson had hoped
all his life. He hoped for himself, he hoped for the whole human race.
He served the abstraction that he called "PROgress" with unflinching and
unquestioning loyalty. Every new scheme of increasing happiness by force
found a helper, a fighter, and a giver in him; by turns he had been
an Abolitionist, a Fourierist, a Socialist, a Greenbacker, a Farmers'
Alliance man. Disappointment always was followed hard on its heels by a
brand-new confidence. Progress ruled his farm as well as his politics;
he bought the newest implements and subscribed trustfully to four
agricultural papers; but being a born lover of the ground, a vein of
saving doubt did assert itself sometimes in his work; and, on the whole,
as a farmer he was successful. But his success never ventured outside
his farm gates. At buying or selling, at a bargai