hen not assisting his father in the cheese factory, to lounge
around the post-office and look up the street to see what the Hamilton
girls were doing. Sylvanus always assisted Coonie most willingly; he
was a young man who was noted all over the township of Oro for his
obliging ways and his mannerly deportment. Indeed, Mr. Todd posed as
an authority on all matters of etiquette. He even went so far once as
to admonish Wee Andra on the errors of his pedestrianism. "When you're
walkin' with a lady, Andra," Sylvanus had said kindly, "you'd ought to
let her walk up agin' the buildin's." But so far from improving the
giant's manners this good advice only caused him to place his adviser
in a tank of cheese factory whey and to continue thereafter to walk as
seemed right in his own eyes.

Coonie did not care for Syl Todd; he had much of the simple
guilelessness of his parents and did not take teasing with any
pleasurable degree of asperity. So the mail-carrier generally treated
him with silent contempt. He swung himself from the buckboard and
hobbled painfully to the store veranda.

"Business seems pressin' with you, Mr. Todd," he remarked as he lit his
pipe. "You're always in an awful rush."

Mr. Todd gave a doubtful grin. "Well say, Coonie, this here's the
backwoodsest place I ever seen; us Americans can't stand it."

Sylvanus had spent six months in the United States, managing a gigantic
business firm, he had hinted, from which enterprise he had returned to
the parental roof, a sadder if not a wiser man, to take up the more
lucrative employment of making cheese. He never quite outlived the
glory of his travels, however.

Coonie grunted. "You should a' stayed over there an' been President.
They must be awful lonesome since you left. Any noos?"

"Well, I should snicker if there wasn't! The master's got into an
awful row!"

His listener sighed deeply. What an opportunity this would have been
to set his version of the story going!

"What's eatin' him?" he asked with wonderful self-control. "Neil kids
been lickin' him again?"

"Worse nor that; he's got into a row with Splinterin' Andra!"

"Gosh!" Coonie's amazement would have deceived a much more astute
individual than Sylvanus Todd. "What's that old wind-mill got himself
flappin' about now?"

"About gettin' the organ for the Presbyterian church. Watson spoke to
Splinterin' Andra about it an' the old fellow gave him Hail Columbia,
as they say in the