begins to go down the other side of the hill and the bastin' threads
are showin' in his hair. It's pretty hard to have to do with hired
help. I understand now better'n ever why Billy Winter was cryin' so
hard when his third wife died. Billy was whoopin' it up somethin'
awful when Mr. Grantley went out to bury the woman, and Mr. Grantley
said somethin' to comfort Billy about her bein' in a better
place--that was a dead sure bet, anyway--but Billy went right on
bawlin'--he didn't seem to take no notice of this better place
idea--and after a while he says right out, says he: 'She could do
more work than three hired girls, and she was the savin'est one I've
had yet.'"

"Bud'll come back," said John Watson, soothingly. "The poor lad is
feeling hurt about it--he don't like to have people thinkin' hard of
him."

"Wasn't ten dollars a ter'ble fine, John, only eighteen?" Mr. Perkins
said.

"It isn't the money I'm thinkin' of, it's feelin's; poor Bud, and him
as honest a lad as ever drew breath." John Watson had a shrewd
suspicion of who had "plugged" the grain.

"Well, I don't see why he need feel so bad," the other man said.
"Nobody minds stealin' from the railways or the elevator men. They'd
steal the coppers off a dead man's eyes--eh, what? But where Bud ever
got such notions of honesty, I don't know--search me. It's a fine
thing to be honest, but it's well to have it under control. Now,
there's some kind of sharp tricks I don't hold with. They say that
Mrs. George Steadman sold a seven-pound stone in the middle of a
crock of butter to Mason here some years ago. She thought he'd ship
it away to Winnipeg and nobody'd ever know; but as sure as you're
born, when she got home she found it in the middle of her box of tea.
He paid her twenty-five cents a pound for it, but, by golly! she paid
him fifty cents a pound for it back. Now, I don't hold with that--it
was too risky a deal for me. This Mason's a sharp one, I tell
you--you'll get up early if you ever get ahead of him. In the airly
days, when we all had to go on tick for everything we got at his
store--they do say that every time one of us farmers went to town
that Mason, as soon as he saw us, would say to his bookkeeper: 'Tom
Perkins is in town; put him down for a dollar's worth of sugar and a
quarter of chewin' tobacco.'"

Pearl came out with a pail to dig some potatoes in the garden.

"Well, my pretty dear," Mr. Perkins said amiably, "how are you
feeling this eve