if he should abandon some of the
lesser duties of his office, he might devote his energies more intently
to the Infant Class. That was all. You may hear him there any afternoon,
talking to them, if you will stand under the maple trees and listen
through the open windows of the new Infant School.

And, as for audiences, for intelligence, for attention--well, if I want
to find listeners who can hear and understand about the great spaces
of Lake Huron, let me tell of it, every time face to face with the blue
eyes of the Infant Class, fresh from the infinity of spaces greater
still. Talk of grown-up people all you like, but for listeners let me
have the Infant Class with their pinafores and their Teddy Bears and
their feet not even touching the floor, and Mr. Uttermost may preach to
his heart's content of the newer forms of doubt revealed by the higher
criticism.

So you will understand that the Dean's mind is, if anything, even
keener, and his head even clearer than before. And if you want proof of
it, notice him there beneath the plum blossoms reading in the Greek:
he has told me that he finds that he can read, with the greatest ease,
works in the Greek that seemed difficult before. Because his head is so
clear now.

And sometimes,--when his head is very clear,--as he sits there reading
beneath the plum blossoms he can hear them singing beyond, and his
wife's voice.

SEVEN. The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin

Judge Pepperleigh lived in a big house with hardwood floors and a wide
piazza that looked over the lake from the top of Oneida Street.

Every day about half-past five he used to come home from his office in
the Mariposa Court House. On some days as he got near the house he would
call out to his wife:

"Almighty Moses, Martha! who left the sprinkler on the grass?"

On other days he would call to her from quite a little distance off:
"Hullo, mother! Got any supper for a hungry man?"

And Mrs. Pepperleigh never knew which it would be. On the days when he
swore at the sprinkler you could see his spectacles flash like dynamite.
But on the days when he called: "Hullo, mother," they were simply
irradiated with kindliness.

Some days, I say, he would cry out with a perfect whine of indignation:
"Suffering Caesar! has that infernal dog torn up those geraniums again?"
And other days you would hear him singing out: "Hullo, Rover! Well,
doggie, well, old fellow!"

In the same way at breakfast, the j