asn't alive instead of you, she could put a patch on in five minutes
any time you asked her, but she never spent her time in roarin' and
bellerin' round after a vote;" and so saying Uncle Jake disappeared,
leaving his grandniece with her pretty pink cheeks deepened to
scarlet, and a spark in her blue eyes.

"The old dog! if he wasn't grandma's brother I'd hate him. It's always
these crawling old things who can do nothing themselves, and have to
be kept by a woman, who are always the worst at trying to make women's
position lower, and talk about them as inferior. He's always after a
woman to do this and to do that, and comparing her--I'd like to see
the woman, mother or father--who could put a patch on those pants in
five minutes."

"There's one way it could be done in the time," I said, calling to
mind a prank related by a gay little friend--"clap it on with
cobbler's wax."

Dawn's eyes danced, and the irritation receded from the corners of the
pretty mouth as, procuring a piece of cloth and a lump of cobbler's
wax, she did the deed in less than five minutes, and Uncle Jake
contentedly received his trousers, while I departed to put in some
more time with my friend Andrew, without telling her there might be a
sequel to patching trousers with cobbler's wax.

"Well, Andrew, how goes the scrubbing?"

"Oh, great! Look at that!" said he, drawing back to exhibit a really
clean table; and as it would not have conduced to our friendship had I
pointed out that it had been arrived at at the expense of slushing the
lime-washed wall and the stand of the separator, I wisely kept
silent.

"There! I reckon me grandma nor Jim Clay neither never done a table
better," he said with enviable self-appreciation. "You know I reckon
them old yarns about the people bein' so good w'en they was young is a
little too thin to stand washin'--don't you? You've only got to take
the things the wonderful Jim Clay and me grandma done w'en they was
courtin',--you get her on a string to tell you,--an' if Dawn done the
same with any of the blokes now, she'd jolly soon hear about it; an'
as for old Jake there, I reckon I'd be able to put him through meself
at his own age--don't you? Anyhow, I'm full of farmin'. It's only
fools an' horses sweat themselves, all the others go in for
auctioneering, or parliament, or something, and have a fine screw
comin' in for nothing."

"But think of those water-melons," I said; for as a subject of
conversation he mo