e years it looked as if we were going to see every dream
come true. Another time and we would be poorer than at first. One year
the hail destroyed everything; another time the flood carried away all
we had.

"When little Dave was eleven years old, he had learned to plough.
Every one of us was working to our limit that year. I ploughed and
hoed, both, and big Dave really hardly took time to sleep. You see,
his idea was that we must do better by our children than we had been
done by, and Fanny, our eldest, was thirteen. Big Dave thought all
girls married at sixteen because his mother did, and so did I; so that
spring he said, 'In just three years Fanny will be leaving us and we
_must_ do right by her. I wanted powerfully bad that _you_ should have
a blue silk wedding dress, mother, but of course it couldn't be had,
and you looked as pretty as a rose in your pink lawn. But I've always
wanted you to have a blue silk. As you can't have it, let us get it
for Fanny; and of course we must have everything else according.' And
so we worked mighty hard.

"Little Dave begged to be allowed to plough. Every other boy in the
neighborhood did,--some of them younger than he,--but somehow I didn't
want him to. One of our neighbors had been sick a lot that year and
his crops were about ruined. It was laying-by time and we had finished
laying by our crops--all but about half a day's ploughing in the corn.
That morning at breakfast, big Dave said he would take the horses and
go over to Henry Boles's and plough that day to help out,--said he
could finish ours any time, and it didn't matter much if it didn't get
ploughed. He told the children to lay off that day and go fishing and
berrying. So he went to harness his team, and little Dave went to help
him. Fanny and I went to milk, and all the time I could hear little
Dave begging his father to let him finish the ploughing. His father
said he could if I said so.

"I will never forget his eager little face as he began on me. He had a
heap of freckles; I remember noticing them that morning; he was
barefooted, and I remember that one toe was skinned. Big Dave was
lighting his pipe, and till to-day I remember how he looked as he held
the match to his pipe, drew a puff of smoke, and said, 'Say yes,
mother.' So I said yes, and little Dave ran to open the gate for his
father.

"As big Dave rode through the gate, our boy caught him by the leg and
said, 'I just _love_ you, daddy.' Big Dave bent do