at the back, while Uncle Bart himself stood every day
behind his long joiner's bench almost knee-deep in shavings. How the
children loved to play with the white, satiny rings, making them into
necklaces, hanging them to their ears and weaving them into wreaths.

Wonderful houses could always be built in the corner of the shop, out of
the little odds and ends and "nubbins" of white pine, and Uncle Bart was
ever ready to cut or saw a special piece needed for some great purpose.

The sound of the plane was sweet music in the old joiner's ears. "I
don't hardly know how I'd a made out if I'd had to work in a mill,"
he said confidentially to Cephas. "The noise of a saw goin' all day,
coupled with your mother's tongue mornin's an' evenin's, would 'a' been
too much for my weak head. I'm a quiet man, Cephas, a man that needs a
peaceful shop where he can get away from the comforts of home now and
then, without shirkin' his duty nor causin' gossip. If you should ever
marry, Cephas,--which don't look to me likely without you pick out a
dif'rent girl,--I 'd advise you not to keep your stock o' paints in the
barn or the shed, for it's altogether too handy to the house and the
women-folks. Take my advice and have a place to yourself, even if it's
a small one. A shop or a barn has saved many a man's life and reason
Cephas, for it's ag'in' a woman's nature to have you underfoot in the
house without hectorin' you. Choose a girl same's you would a horse
that you want to hitch up into a span; 't ain't every two that'll stan'
together without kickin'. When you get the right girl, keep out of her
way consid'able an' there'll be less wear an' tear."

It was June and the countryside was so beautiful it seemed as if no
one could be unhappy, however great the cause. That was what Waitstill
Baxter thought as she sat down on the millstone step for a word with the
old joiner, her best and most understanding friend in all the village.

"I've come to do my mending here with you," she said brightly, as she
took out her well-filled basket and threaded her needle. "Isn't it a
wonderful morning? Nobody could look the world in the face and do a
wrong thing on such a day, could they, Uncle Bart?"

The meadows were a waving mass of golden buttercups; the shallow water
at the river's edge just below the shop was blue with spikes of
arrow-weed; a bunch of fragrant water-lilies, gathered from the
mill-pond's upper levels, lay beside Waitstill's mending-bas