said, and wipe out the mistakes, and show
folks what a Newbolt can do when he gits his foot set right."

"He'll do it, too," said Sol, without a reserved grudge or jealousy;
"he's doin' it already."

"Yes, I always knew Joe would," said she. "When he was nothing but a
little shaver he'd read the _Cottage Encyclopedy_ and the _Imitation_
and the Bible, from back to back. I said then he'd be governor of this
state, and he will."

She spoke confidently, nodding over her work.

"Shucks! How do you know he will?"

Sol's faith was not strong in this high-flying forecast. It seemed to
him that it was crowding things a little too far.

"You'll live to see it," said she.

Sol sat with his back against a pillar of the porch, one foot on the
ground, the other standing on the boards in front of him, his hands
locked about his doubled knee. He sat there and looked up at the Widow
Newbolt, raising his eyebrows and rolling his eyes, but not lifting his
head, which was slightly bent. "Well, what's to be's to be," said he.
"When's he goin' to marry?"

"When he's through goin' to college."

"That'll be two or three years, maybe?"

"Maybe."

"Hum; Alice Price she'll be gettin' purty well along by that time."

"She's not quite a year older than Joe," Mrs. Newbolt corrected him,
with some asperity, "and she's one of the kind that'll keep. Well, I was
married myself, and had a baby, when I was nineteen. But that's no
sign."

"Joe'll build, I reckon, before then?" guessed Sol.

"No; Alice don't want him to. She wants to come here a bride, to this
house, like I come to it long, long ago. We'll fix up and make ready for
her, little by little, as we go along. It'll be bringin' back the
pleasure of the old days, it'll be like livin' my courtship and marriage
over. This was a fine house in the days that Peter brought me here, for
Peter, he had money then, and he put the best there was goin' into it."

"It looks better than any house around here now, since you fixed it up
and painted it," said Sol.

"It's better inside than outside," said she, with a woman's pride in a
home, which justifies her warmth for it. "We had it all plastered and
varnished. The doors and casin's and all the trimmin's are walnut, worth
their weight in gold, now, almost, Judge Maxwell says."

"Yes, the curly walnut's all gone, years and years ago," said Sol.

"It passed away with the pioneers," sighed she.

"I suppose they'll build in time, though?" So