ning?"

"I am real well, thank you," Pearl said, "and I hope you are, too."

"Well now, my dear, I am not," he said. "You know, of course, that
Buddie's gone."

"Yes, I know," said Pearl, "but I know Bud didn't do it. Bud is a
good boy, and too honest to do any thing like that. Bud wouldn't plug
grain. What does Bud care for a few cents more on every bushel if he
has to lie to get it?"

"Look at that now, John!" Mr. Perkins cried, nudging Mr. Watson
gaily. "Isn't that a woman for you all over, young and all as she is?
They never think how the money comes, the lovely critturs."

"Money isn't everything, Mr. Perkins," said Pearl earnestly.

"Well, my little dear, most of us think it is pretty nearly
everything."

"God doesn't care very much about money," she answered. "Look at the
sort of people he gives it to."

Mr. Perkins looked at her in surprise. "Upon my word, that's true,"
he said. "Say, Pearlie, you'll be taking away the preachers' job from
them when you get a little bigger, if they're not careful."

Pearl laughed good-humouredly and went on with her potato-digging.

Thomas Perkins went home soon after, and even to him the quiet glory
of the autumn evening came with a sense of beauty and of God's
overshadowing care. "I kinda wish now," he said to himself, "that I
had gone and cleared up the boy's name at first. I can hardly do it
now. They would think I hadn't had the nerve to do it at first. Say,
what that kid said is pretty near right. Money ain't everything." He
was looking at the bars of amethyst cloud that streaked the west, and
at the lemon-coloured sky below them. Prairie chickens whirred
through the air on their way to a straw pile near by. From the Souris
valley behind him came the strident whistle of the evening train as
it thundered over the long wooden bridge. A sudden love of his home
and family came to Thomas Perkins as he looked over at his
comfortable buildings and his broad fields. "If Bud were only over
there," he thought, "how good it would be! Poor Bud, wandering
to-night without a home, and through no fault of his own."

Just for the moment Mr. Perkins was honestly repentant; then the
other side of his nature came back. "I do hope that boy will think to
grease' his boots--they'll go like paper if he doesn't," he said.

CHAPTER XXIII

PEARL'S PHILOSOPHY

For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man's mind,
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wond