ckon I could tell all that fool's jokes now. Sometimes I can't
help thinkin' about 'em in meetin' when the sermon's long. I mind I
had on a pair of new boots that hurt me like the mischief, but I
forgot all about 'em when that fellow rode the donkey. I recall I
had to take them boots off as soon as I got out of sight o' town,
and walked home in the mud barefoot."

"O poor little fellow!" Hester ejaculated, drawing her chair nearer
and leaning her elbows on the table. "What cruel shoes they did use
to make for children. I remember I went up to Back Creek to see the
circus wagons go by. They came down from Romney, you know. The
circus men stopped at the creek to water the animals, an' the
elephant got stubborn an' broke a big limb off the yellow willow
tree that grew there by the toll house porch, an' the Scribners were
'fraid as death he'd pull the house down. But this much I saw him
do; he waded in the creek an' filled his trunk with water, and
squirted it in at the window and nearly ruined Ellen Scribner's pink
lawn dress that she had just ironed an' laid out on the bed ready to
wear to the circus."

"I reckon that must have been a trial to Ellen," chuckled William,
"for she was mighty prim in them days."

Hester drew her chair still nearer William's. Since the children had
begun growing up, her conversation with her husband had been almost
wholly confined to questions of economy and expense. Their
relationship had become purely a business one, like that between
landlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she had
unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude
towards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more
doggedly than did Hester with her husband in behalf of her sons. The
strategic contest had gone on so long that it had almost crowded out
the memory of a closer relationship. This exchange of confidences
to-night, when common recollections took them unawares and opened
their hearts, had all the miracle of romance. They talked on and on;
of old neighbors, of old familiar faces in the valley where they had
grown up, of long forgotten incidents of their youth--weddings,
picnics, sleighing parties and baptizings. For years they had talked
of nothing else but butter and eggs and the prices of things, and
now they had as much to say to each other as people who meet after a
long separation.

When the clock struck ten, William rose and went over to his walnut
secretary and unl