ildering, innumerable multitude of poles, connected with a maze of
wire and twine, had been set out. Farther on at a turn of the road, they
came upon Dyke himself, driving a farm wagon loaded with more poles.
He was in his shirt sleeves, his massive, hairy arms bare to the elbow,
glistening with sweat, red with heat. In his bell-like, rumbling voice,
he was calling to his foreman and a boy at work in stringing the poles
together. At sight of Presley and Vanamee he hailed them jovially,
addressing them as "boys," and insisting that they should get into the
wagon with him and drive to the house for a glass of beer. His mother
had only the day before returned from Marysville, where she had been
looking up a seminary for the little tad. She would be delighted to see
the two boys; besides, Vanamee must see how the little tad had grown
since he last set eyes on her; wouldn't know her for the same little
girl; and the beer had been on ice since morning. Presley and Vanamee
could not well refuse.

They climbed into the wagon and jolted over the uneven ground through
the bare forest of hop-poles to the house. Inside they found Mrs.
Dyke, an old lady with a very gentle face, who wore a cap and a very
old-fashioned gown with hoop skirts, dusting the what-not in a corner of
the parlor. The two men were presented and the beer was had from off the
ice.

"Mother," said Dyke, as he wiped the froth from his great blond beard,
"ain't Sid anywheres about? I want Mr. Vanamee to see how she has grown.
Smartest little tad in Tulare County, boys. Can recite the whole of
'Snow Bound,' end to end, without skipping or looking at the book. Maybe
you don't believe that. Mother, ain't I right--without skipping a line,
hey?"

Mrs. Dyke nodded to say that it was so, but explained that Sidney was
in Guadalajara. In putting on her new slippers for the first time the
morning before, she had found a dime in the toe of one of them and had
had the whole house by the ears ever since till she could spend it.

"Was it for licorice to make her licorice water?" inquired Dyke gravely.

"Yes," said Mrs. Dyke. "I made her tell me what she was going to get
before she went, and it was licorice."

Dyke, though his mother protested that he was foolish and that Presley
and Vanamee had no great interest in "young ones," insisted upon showing
the visitors Sidney's copy-books. They were monuments of laborious,
elaborate neatness, the trite moralities and ready-made