y his thoughtful countenance and preoccupied air, however; nor were
matters helped any by the question David put to Mr. Holly just before
dinner.

"Do you mean," he asked, "that because I didn't fill the woodbox right
away, I was being a discord?"

"You were what?" demanded the amazed Simeon Holly.

"Being a discord--playing out of tune, you know," explained David, with
patient earnestness. "Father said--" But again Simeon Holly had turned
irritably away; and David was left with his perplexed questions still
unanswered.

CHAPTER VI

NUISANCES, NECESSARY AND OTHERWISE

For some time after dinner, that first day, David watched Mrs. Holly in
silence while she cleared the table and began to wash the dishes.

"Do you want me to--help?" he asked at last, a little wistfully.

Mrs. Holly, with a dubious glance at the boy's brown little hands,
shook her head.

"No, I don't. No, thank you," she amended her answer.

For another sixty seconds David was silent; then, still more wistfully,
he asked:--

"Are all these things you've been doing all day 'useful labor'?"

Mrs. Holly lifted dripping hands from the dishpan and held them
suspended for an amazed instant.

"Are they--Why, of course they are! What a silly question! What put
that idea into your head, child?"

"Mr. Holly; and you see it's so different from what father used to call
them."

"Different?"

"Yes. He said they were a necessary nuisance,--dishes, and getting
meals, and clearing up,--and he didn't do half as many of them as you
do, either."

"Nuisance, indeed!" Mrs. Holly resumed her dishwashing with some
asperity. "Well, I should think that might have been just about like
him."

"Yes, it was. He was always that way," nodded David pleasantly. Then,
after a moment, he queried: "But aren't you going to walk at all
to-day?"

"To walk? Where?"

"Why, through the woods and fields--anywhere."

"Walking in the woods, NOW--JUST WALKING? Land's sake, boy, I've got
something else to do!"

"Oh, that's too bad, isn't it?" David's face expressed sympathetic
regret. "And it's such a nice day! Maybe it'll rain by tomorrow."

"Maybe it will," retorted Mrs. Holly, with slightly uplifted eyebrows
and an expressive glance. "But whether it does or does n't won't make
any difference in my going to walk, I guess."

"Oh, won't it?" beamed David, his face changing. "I'm so glad! I don't
mind the rain, either. Father and I used to go in the rain lots of
tim