ilwayman makes in eight hours. If you happen to have
grapes or oranges, if they manage to escape the frost, an' hail, an'
caterpillar, then the blight ketches 'em, or there's a drewth, and
there ain't none; an' if there's any, there's so much that there ain't
no sale for 'em; and the farmer's life I reckon ought to be stopped as
gamblin', for a gambler's life ain't one bit more precarious."

"Then why the jooce do you want me to go on the land?" said Andrew.

"That ain't the point."

"It's the most sticking out point to me," protested the lad. "I reckon
bein' on the land is a mug's game; scrapin' like a fool when a feller
could be sittin' in an office an' gettin' all they want twice as
easy."

"Here, you don't know what's good. It's more respectabler bein' on the
land. You get the pony out, an' make the coffee, an' hold your
tongue."

Andrew and I had undertaken to make the coffee for supper, and thus
give Carry, whose week in the kitchen it was, a chance to go to the
meeting.

They all arrived from it after a time--Dawn and the knight together,
Carry and Larry Witcom following. Oh, where was "Dora"?

"Who's that with you, Carry?" asked Andrew. "There was a young lady
named Carry, who had a sweetheart named Larry; at the gate they often
would tarry, to talk about when they would marry."

But this remark of Andrew's to parry, Dawn good-naturedly plunged into
an account of the meeting.

"What did they do?" asked grandma.

"Do?--they only blabbed. Mr Walker was there to-night. We asked that
Jimmeny girl from the pub. to join, and she delivered a great parable
at us, looking round all the time to see if the boot-licking tone of
it was pleasing the men. She said that women ought to bring up their
children to respect them--"

"The most commonest idea some people has of bringin' up their children
to respect them," grandma chipped in, "is to let youngsters make
toe-rags of their mother; and boys only as high as the table think
they can cheek their mother because she's only a woman an' hasn't as
much right to be livin' in the world as them, and when they are
twenty-one the law confirms this beautiful sentiment. Leastways, until
just lately," she concluded.

"And this Jimmeny piece," continued Dawn, "said women ought to treat
their husbands decently, and she thinks a woman disgraces her sex by
getting up on a platform to speak. I asked her if she thought they did
not disgrace themselves and the other sex too by st