throw the weight of her
expectation in with his. "When father bought the Turnbull place I
thought, as much as ever I did anything in my life, he meant to make it
over to me."

His mother's eyes stayed persistently downcast. A little flush rose to
her cheeks.

"Well," she temporized, "you ain't goin' to count your chickens before
they're hatched. It's a poor way. It never leads to anything but
disappointment in the end."

"Why, mother," said Herman warmly, "you thought so too. We talked it
over only night before last, and you said you guessed father'd put me on
to that farm."

"I said I didn't know what he'd bought it for, if 'twa'n't for that,"
she amended. "Don't you build on anything I said. Don't you do it,
Hermie."

Her son stood there frowning in perplexity, his hands deep in his
pockets, and his feet apart.

"But you said so yourself, mother," he persisted. "I told you how I'd
always helped father out, long past my majority, and never hinted for
anything beyond my board and clothes. And when I got engaged to Annie, I
went to him and said, 'Father, now's the time to give me a start, or let
me cut loose from here.' And he never answered me a word; but a couple
of weeks after that he bought the Turnbull place. And last week it was,
he said to me, kind of quick, as if he'd made up his mind to somethin',
and wa'n't quite ready to talk it over, 'I've got a sort of a new scheme
afoot.' And then 'twas I wrote to Annie and asked her how soon she could
be ready to come, if I was ready to have her. You know all that, mother.
What makes you act as if you didn't?"

The argument was too warm for Mrs. Dill. She rose from her chair and
began putting up the table-leaf and setting out the necessary dishes for
a batch of cake.

"Your father wanted you should take an axe and go down where he is in
the long lot," she remarked. "And I wouldn't open your head to him about
what we've been sayin', Hermie. You talk it over with mother. That's the
best way."

"Why, course I sha'n't speak of it till I have to." He took up his cap,
and then with an air of aggrieved dignity turned to the door. "But the
time'll come when I've got to speak of it. Lot Collins was tellin' me
only this mornin' over to the blacksmith's, how his father's took him
into partnership, and Lot's only twenty-one this spring. His father
ain't wasted a day."

"Well, that's a real business, blacksmithin' is," his mother hastened to
reply.

"So's farmin' a re