gray as his socks,
and all the rest of him--blue jeans. And my pink school report, I
remember, had slipped down under the stove, and the tortoise-shell cat
was lashing it with her tail; but Daniel's report, gray as his face,
was still clutched up in Pa's horny old hand. For just a second we
eyed each other sort of dumb-like, and then for the first time, I tell
you, I seen tears in his eyes.

"'Johnny,' he says, 'it's Daniel that'll have to go to college.
Bright men,' he says, 'don't need no education.'"

Even after thirty years the Traveling Salesman's hand shook slightly
with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted
carelessness to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft,
flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether
falter.

"I'd had pains before in my stomach," he acknowledged good-naturedly,
"but that morning with Pa was the first time in my life that I ever
had any pain in my plans!--So we mortgaged the house and the cow-barn
and the maple-sugar trees," he continued, more and more cheerfully,
"and Daniel finished his schooling--in the Lord's own time--and went
to college."

With another sudden, loud guffaw of mirth all the color came flushing
back again into his heavy face.

"Well, Daniel has sure needed all the education he could get," he
affirmed heartily. "He's a Methodist minister now somewhere down in
Georgia--and, educated 'way up to the top notch, he don't make no more
than $650 a year. $650!--oh, glory! Why, Daniel's piazza on his new
house cost him $175, and his wife's last hospital bill was $250, and
just one dentist alone gaffed him sixty-five dollars for straightening
his oldest girl's teeth!"

"Not sixty-five?" gasped the Young Electrician in acute dismay. "Why,
two of my kids have got to have it done! Oh, come now--you're
joshing!"

"I'm not either joshing," cried the Traveling Salesman. "Sure it was
sixty-five dollars. Here's the receipted bill for it right here in my
pocket." Brusquely he reached out and snatched the paper back again.
"Oh, no, I beg your pardon. That's the receipt for the piazza.--What?
It isn't? For the hospital bill then?--Oh, hang! Well, never mind. It
_was_ sixty-five dollars. I tell you I've got it somewhere."

"Oh--you--paid--for--them--all, did you?" quizzed the Youngish Girl
before she had time to think.

"No, indeed!" lied the Traveling Salesman loyally. "But $650 a year?
What can a family man do with that? Why