ling gals is the wust of all!" snarled Jabez Potter, from the
sink, where he had just taken his face out of the soapsuds bath he always
gave it before sitting down to table. "I reckon ye ain't forgot what I
told ye:

"'Whistlin' gals an' crowin' hens
Always come to some bad ends!'"

"Now, Jabez!" remonstrated Aunt Alvirah.

But Ruth only laughed. "You've got it wrong, Uncle Jabez," she declared.
"There is another version of that old doggerel. It is:

"'Whistling girls and blatting sheep
Are the two best things a farmer can keep!'"

Then she went straight to him and, as his irritated face came out of the
huck towel, she put both arms around his neck and kissed him on his
grizzled cheek.

This sort of treatment always closed her Uncle Jabez's lips for a time.
There seemed no answer to be made to such an argument--and Ruth _did_ love
the crusty old man and was grateful to him.

When the miller had retired to his own chamber to count and recount the
profits of the day, as he always did every evening, Aunt Alvirah
complained more than usual of the old man's niggardly ways.

"It's gittin' awful, Ruthie, when you ain't to home. He's ashamed to have
me set so mean a table when you air here. For he _does_ kinder care about
what you think of him, my pretty, after all."

"Oh, Aunt Alvirah! I thought he was cured of _little_ 'stingies.'"

"No, he ain't! no, he ain't!" cried the old lady, sitting down with a
groan. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! I tell ye, my pretty, I have to
steal out things a'tween meals to Ben sometimes, or that boy wouldn't have
half enough to eat. Jabez has had a new padlock put on the meat-house
door, and I can't git a slice of bacon without his knowin' on it."

"That is ridiculous!" exclaimed Ruth, who had less patience now than she
once had for her great uncle's penuriousness. She was positive that it was
not necessary.

"Ree-dic'lous or not; it's _so_," Aunt Alvirah asserted. "Sometimes I feel
like I was a burden on him myself."

"_You_ a burden, dear Aunt Alvirah!" cried Ruth, with tears in her eyes.
"You would be a blessing, not a burden, in anybody's house. Uncle Jabez
was very fortunate indeed to get you to come here to the Red Mill."

"I dunno--I dunno," groaned the old lady. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!
I'm a poor, rheumaticky creeter--and nobody but Jabez would have taken me
out o' the poorhouse an' done for me as he has."

"You mean, you have done for him!"