on the side
jam. He's all out o' cuss-words and there hain't a log budged. Now, stid
o' dog-warpin' this afternoon, an' lettin' the oxen haul off all them
stubborn logs by main force, we're goin' to ask you to set up on the
bank and smile at the jam. 'Land! she can do it!' says Ike a minute ago.
'When Rose starts smilin',' he says, 'there ain't a jam nor a bung in
_me_ that don't melt like wax and jest float right off same as the logs
do when they get into quiet, sunny water.'"

Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite Shapley's, where
she put up the horse and waited till the men had eaten their luncheon.
The drivers slept and had breakfast and supper at the Billings house, a
mile down-river, but for several years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the
noon meal, sending it down piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys
always said that up or down the whole length of the Saco there was
no such cooking as the Wileys', and much of this praise was earned by
Rose's serving. It was the old grandmother who burnished the tin
plates and dippers till they looked like silver; for--crotchety and
sharp-tongued as she was--she never allowed Rose to spoil her hands with
soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and packed, Rose who
hemmed squares of old white table-cloths and sheets to line the baskets
and keep things daintily separate, Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes
were the pride and admiration of church sociables and sewing societies.

Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of ecstatic
approval ran through the crowd when the covers were removed. Pieces of
sweet home-fed pork glistened like varnished mahogany on the top of the
beans, and underneath were such deeps of fragrant juice as come only
from slow fires and long, quiet hours in brick ovens. Who else could
steam and bake such mealy loaves of brown bread, brown as plum-pudding,
yet with no suspicion of sogginess? Who such soda biscuits, big,
feathery, tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And green-apple
pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere, or more
delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?--doughnuts that had
spurned the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and risen from its
waves like golden-brown Venuses.

"By the great seleckmen!" ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed his
fourth, "I'd like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four sisters like
them Wileys, and jest set still on the river-bank an' hev