plate with the stew. "There," said she, "don't
you wait any longer. I guess mebbe you'd better set the dish down on
the hearth to keep warm for Elmira and your father first, though."

"Ain't you goin' to eat any yourself?" asked Jerome.

"I couldn't touch a mite of that stew if you was to pay me for it. I
never set much by parsnip stew myself, anyway."

Jerome eyed his mother soberly. "There's enough," said he. "I've got
all I can eat here."

"I tell you I don't want any. Ain't that enough? There's plenty of
stew if I wanted it, but I don't. I never liked it any too well, an'
to-day seems as if it fairly went against my stomach. Set it down on
the hearth the way I told you to, an' eat your dinner before it gets
any colder."

Jerome obeyed. He ate his plate of stew; then his mother obliged him
to eat another. When Elmira returned she had her fill, and there was
plenty left for Abel Edwards when he should come home.

Jerome, well fed, felt like another boy when he returned to his task
in the garden. "Guess I can get this spadin' 'most done this
afternoon," he said to himself. He made the brown earth fly around
him. He whistled as he worked. As the afternoon wore on he began to
wonder if he could not finish the garden before his father got home.
He was sure he had not come as yet, for he had kept an eye on the
road, and besides he would have heard the heavy rattle of the
wood-wagon. "Father 'll be real tickled when he sees the garden all
done," said Jerome, and he stopped whistling and bent all his young
spirit and body to his work. He never thought of feeling anxious
about his father.

At five o'clock the back door of the Edwards house opened. Elmira
came out with a shawl over her head and hurried up the hill. "Oh,
Jerome," she panted, when she got up to him. "You must stop working,
mother says, and go right straight off to the ten-acre lot. Father
'ain't come home yet, an' we're dreadful worried about him. She says
she's afraid something has happened to him."

Jerome stuck his spade upright in the ground and stared at her. "What
does she s'pose has happened?" he said, slowly. Jerome had no
imagination for disasters.

"She thinks maybe he's fell down, or some wood's fell on him, or
Peter's run away."

"Peter wouldn't ever run away; it's much as ever he'll walk lately,
an' father don't ever fall down."

Elmira fairly danced up and down in the fresh mould. She caught her
brother's arm and twitched it and push