its cash results.

"Now I've learned all about fly-fishing," he said, with confidence, "I
can catch fish anywhere. I sha'n't have to go to fish out of that old
mill-pond again."

"Six dollars!" exclaimed his mother, from behind the tea-pot. "What
awful extravagance there is in this wicked world! But what'll you do
with six dollars?"

"It's high time he began to earn something," said the tall blacksmith,
gloomily. "It's hard times in Crofield. There's almost nothing for
him to do here."

"That's why I'm going somewhere else," said Jack, with a sudden burst
of energy, and showing a very red face. "Now I've got some money to
pay my way, I'm going to New York."

"No, you're not," said his father, and then there was a silence for a
moment.

"What on earth could you do in New York?" said his mother, staring at
him as if he had said something dreadful. She was not a small woman,
but she had an air of trying to be larger, and her face quickly began
to recover its ordinary smile of self-confident hope, so much like that
of Jack. She added, before anybody else could speak: "There are
thousands and thousands of folks there already. Well--I suppose you
could get along there, if they can."

"It's too full," said her husband. "It's fuller'n Crofield. He
couldn't do anything in a city. Besides, it isn't any use; he couldn't
get there, or anywhere near there, on six dollars."

"If he only could go somewhere, and do something, and be somebody,"
said Mary, staring hard at her plate.

She had echoed Jack's thought, perfectly. "That's you, Molly," he
said, "and I'm going to do it, too."

"You're going to work a-haying, all next week, I guess," said his
father, "if there's anybody wants ye. All the money you earn you can
give to your mother. You ain't going a-fishing again, right away.
Nobody ever caught the same fish twice."

Slowly, glumly, but promptly, Jack handed over his two greenbacks to
his mother, but he only remarked:

"If I work for anybody 'round here, they'll want me to take my pay in
hay. They won't pay cash."

"Hay's just as good," said his father; and then he changed the subject
and told his wife how the miller had again urged him to trade for the
strip of land along the creek, above and below the bridge. "It comes
right up to the line of my lot," he said, "and to Hawkins's fence. The
whole of it isn't worth as much as mine is, but I don't see what he
wants to trade for."

She agreed wi