e was to marry one of them it would be all up with
her. Do you know anythink about teachers?"

"Yes; I would be only too pleased to see to that part of it. Your
granddaughter is a great pleasure to me. She gives me some interest in
life which, having no relations and being unfit for permanent
occupation, I would otherwise lack."

"Well, I'm sure Dawn would interest anybody, and I think you're a good
companion for her. She seems to have took up with you, and you've
evidently been a person that's seen somethink, an' can tell her this,
that, an' the other, but as for that she don't want no tellin' to be
better than most. _Some people!_--" Grandma always worked herself up
to a pitch of congested choler when these unworthy individuals were
mentioned.

"I'll think about the singin' lessons if they ain't beyond reason.
She's been terrible good lately, and deserves somethink. Here's Larry
Witcom arrove, an' there's Carry gone out to him. I want to see him
meself; he's been a little too strong with his prices lately, but he's
the obliginest feller in many ways. I don't hear anythink about it not
bein' Carry's week in the kitchen w'en Larry comes. She's always ready
to give Dawn a hand then. But we was all young once; I can remember
w'en I worked a point, whether it was me turn or not, to get near Jim
Clay."

"Dawn, I think the battle for the singing lessons is half won," I said
to that individual when I met her privately a few minutes later.

"Really, it can't be true!" said the girl with an intonation of
delight, as she drew a tea-towel she had been washing through her
shapely hands and wrung it dry.

Uncle Jake then entered, and cut short further private discussion.

"There, Dawn!" he said, tossing a pair of trousers on the
kitchen-table, "the seat of them is out, an' I want to put 'em on to
do a little blacksmithin'--they're dirty."

"That's easy to be seen and known too, as some people's things are
always dirty," said she. "When do you want them?"

"At once."

"At once! You'd come in the middle of cooking some pastry and want a
woman to put patches on a dirty old pair of trousers, and then want to
know why the dinner wasn't up to tick; and besides, it's Carry's week
in the house."

For Dawn's sake I would have offered to do the patching, but feared
Uncle Jake might suspect me of matrimonial designs upon him, such
being the conceit of old men.

"I never go to Carry," he snapped, "an' it's a pity your mother
w