with an impatient gesture. 'Try
another and a stronger one, and let's go back to business. You want a
painted panel for your carriage. How will this do?' and he rapidly
sketched a green, pleasant meadow, with a canal running through it, and
on the canal a boat, drawn by one horse, which a barefoot,
elfish-looking boy was driving.

'I swow, square, you're a trump, you be,' Peterkin exclaimed, slapping
him on the back, 'You've hit it to a dot. That's the 'Lizy Ann, and that
there boy is Bije Jones, drivin the old spavin hoss. You or'to hev _me_
somewhere in sight, cussin' the hands as I generally was, and May Jane
on deck, hangin' her clothes to dry. Could you manage that?'

Arthur thought he could, but suggested that Mrs. Peterkin might not like
to be made so conspicuous.

'Possibly she will not like this drawing at all. She may think it too
suggestive of other days.'

'That's so,' Peterkin assented, a little sadly; 'and if she don't take
to it, the old Harry can't make her. She used to be the meekest of wives
them days she dried her clothes on the 'Lizy Ann, but she don't knock
under wuth a cent sense we riz in the world, and Ann Lizy is wus than
her mother. But I'll show this to the old woman and let you know.'

May Jane did not approve, neither did Billy. No use, they said, to
flaunt the canal, horse, driver, and all in people's faces; and so the
discomfited Peterkin went to Arthur again and told him, 'the fat was all
in the fire, and May Jane on a rampage.'

'Try again, squire; but give us some kind of water and craft.'

So Arthur good-humoredly changed the canal into a gracefully flowing
river, in a bend of which, in the distance, there was just visible a
boat, which was a cross between a gondola and one of those little
dangerous things so common on the lakes of Wisconsin. Standing in the
bow of the boat, with folded arms, as if calmly contemplating the
scenery, was the figure of a man--suppositively Peterkin--who swore
'he'd keep this picter in spite of 'em;' and as his wife did not
seriously object, the sketch was transferred in oil to a pannel and
inserted in the carriage, which, when drawn by two shining bays and
driven by a colored man in long coat and tall hat, with Peterkin sitting
back in it with all the pride and pompousness of a two-millionaire, and
May Jane at his side, covered with diamonds, attracted general attention
and comment. Billy seldom patronized the carriage, but frequently rode
beside