e do any good?"

"Lawsy me, child! I've drenched myself with doctor's stuff till I'm
ashamed to look a medicine bottle in the face. My worn out old carcass
can't be helped much by any drugs at all. I guess, as my poor old mother
used to say, the only sure cure for rheumatics is graveyard mould."

"Oh, Aunt Alvirah!"

"I don't say it complainingly," declared the little old woman, smiling
quite cheerfully. "But I tell Jabez Potter he might as well make up his
mind to seeing my corner of his hearth empty one of these days. And he'll
miss me, too, cantankerous as he is sometimes."

But Uncle Jabez was seldom "cantankerous" nowadays when Ruth was at home.
To the miller's mind his great-niece had proved herself to be of the true
Potter blood, although her name was Fielding.

Ruth was a money-maker. He had to wink pretty hard over the fact that she
was likewise a money spender! But one girl--and a young one at
that--could scarcely be expected (and so the old miller admitted) to
combine all the virtues which were worth while in human development.

"Keep a-making of it, Niece Ruth," Uncle Jabez advised earnestly. "You
never can tell when you are going to want more or when your ability to
make money is going to stop. I'd sell the Red Mill or give up and never
grind another grist for nobody, if I didn't feel that perhaps by next
year I should have to stop, anyway--and another year won't much matter."

"You get so little pleasure out of life, Uncle Jabez," Ruth once said in
answer to this statement of the old man.

"Shucks! Don't you believe it. I don't know no better fun than watching
the corn in the hopper or the stuns go round and round while the meal
flour runs out of the spout below, warm and nice-smellin'. The millin'
business is just as pretty a business as there is in the world--when once
you git used to the dust. No doubt of it."

"I can see, Uncle Jabez, that you find it so," said Ruth, but rather
doubtfully.

"Of course it is," said the old man stoutly. "You get fun out of running
about the country and looking at things and seeing how other folks live
and work. And that's all right for you. _You_ make money out of it. But
what would I get out of gadding about?"

"A broader outlook on life, Uncle Jabez."

"I don't want no broader outlook. I don't need nothing of the kind. Nor
does Alviry Boggs, though she's got to talking a dreadful lot lately
about wanting to ride around in an automobile. At her age, too!"