velvet ribbon about her throat that morning.

"You know, I'm so tickled to see mother," Nils went on. "I didn't
know I was so proud of her. A regular pile-driver. How about little
pigtails, down at the house? Is Olaf doing the square thing by those
children?"

Clara frowned pensively. "Olaf has to do something that looks like
the square thing, now that he's a public man!" She glanced drolly at
Nils. "But he makes a good commission out of it. On Sundays they all
get together here and figure. He lets Peter and Anders put in big
bills for the keep of the two boys, and he pays them out of the
estate. They are always having what they call accountings. Olaf gets
something out of it, too. I don't know just how they do it, but it's
entirely a family matter, as they say. And when the Ericsons say
that--" Clara lifted her eyebrows.

Just then the angry _honk-honk_ of an approaching motor sounded from
down the road. Their eyes met and they began to laugh. They laughed
as children do when they can not contain themselves, and can not
explain the cause of their mirth to grown people, but share it
perfectly together. When Clara Vavrika sat down at the piano after
he was gone, she felt that she had laughed away a dozen years. She
practised as if the house were burning over her head.

When Nils greeted his mother and climbed into the front seat of the
motor beside her, Mrs. Ericson looked grim, but she made no comment
upon his truancy until she had turned her car and was retracing her
revolutions along the road that ran by Olaf's big pasture. Then she
remarked dryly:

"If I were you I wouldn't see too much of Olaf's wife while you are
here. She's the kind of woman who can't see much of men without
getting herself talked about. She was a good deal talked about
before he married her."

"Hasn't Olaf tamed her?" Nils asked indifferently.

Mrs. Ericson shrugged her massive shoulders. "Olaf don't seem to
have much luck, when it comes to wives. The first one was meek
enough, but she was always ailing. And this one has her own way. He
says if he quarreled with her she'd go back to her father, and then
he'd lose the Bohemian vote. There are a great many Bohunks in this
district. But when you find a man under his wife's thumb you can
always be sure there's a soft spot in him somewhere."

Nils thought of his own father, and smiled. "She brought him a good
deal of money, didn't she, besides the Bohemian vote?"

Mrs. Ericson sniffed. "We