took up the subject where he had dropped it, as if no
half-expressed sentiment would satisfy her, saying:

"--old skinflint that ever lived in this world, ayes! I ain't goin' to
hold down my opinion o' that man no longer, ayes! I can't. It's too
powerful--ayes!"

Having recovered my composure I repeated that I should like to give up
school and stay at home and work.

Aunt Deel interrupted me by saying:

"I have an idee that Sile Wright will help us--ayes! He's comin' home
an' you better go down an' see him--ayes! Hadn't ye?"

"Bart an' I'll go down to-morrer," said Uncle Peabody.

I remember well our silent going to bed that night and how I lay
thinking and praying that I might grow fast and soon be able to take the
test of manhood--that of standing in a half-bushel measure and
shouldering two bushels of corn. By and by a wind began to shake the
popple leaves above us and the sound soothed me like the whispered
"hush-sh" of a gentle mother.

We dressed with unusual care in the morning. After the chores were done
and we had had our breakfast we went up-stairs to get ready.

Aunt Deel called at the bottom of the stairs in a generous tone:

"Peabody, if I was you I'd put on them butternut trousers--ayes! an' yer
new shirt an' hat an' necktie, but you must be awful careful of
'em--ayes."

The hat and shirt and necktie had been stored in the clothes press for
more than a year but they were nevertheless "new" to Aunt Deel. Poor
soul! She felt the importance of the day and its duties. It was that
ancient, Yankee dread of the poorhouse that filled her heart I suppose.
Yet I wonder, often, why she wished us to be so proudly adorned for such
a crisis.

Some fourteen months before that day my uncle had taken me to Potsdam
and traded grain and salts for what he called a "rip roarin' fine suit
o' clothes" with boots and cap and shirt and collar and necktie to
match, I having earned them by sawing and cording wood at three
shillings a cord. How often we looked back to those better days! The
clothes had been too big for me and I had had to wait until my growth
had taken up the "slack" in my coat and trousers before I could venture
out of the neighborhood. I had tried them on every week or so for a long
time. Now my stature filled them handsomely and they filled me with a
pride and satisfaction which I had never known before. The collar was
too tight, so that Aunt Deel had to sew one end of it to the neckband,
but my tie