asket--ayes! Yer uncle is goin' down to the
village to see 'bout the mortgage this afternoon, ayes!"

It was a Saturday and I spent its hours cording wood in the shed,
pausing now and then for a look into my grammar. It was a happy day, for
the growing cords expressed in a satisfactory manner my new sense of
obligation to those I loved. Imaginary conversations came into my brain
as I worked and were rehearsed in whispers.

"Why, Bart, you're a grand worker," my uncle would say in my fancy.
"You're as good as a hired man."

"Oh, that's nothing," I would answer modestly. "I want to be useful so
you won't be sorry you took me and I'm going to study just as Mr. Wright
did and be a great man if I can and help the poor people. I'm going to
be a better scholar than Sally Dunkelberg, too."

What a day it was!--the first of many like it. I never think of those
days without saying to myself: "What a God's blessing a man like Silas
Wright can be in the community in which his heart and soul are as an
open book!"

As the evening came on I took a long look at my cords. The shed was
nearly half full of them. Four rules of syntax, also, had been carefully
stored away in my brain. I said them over as I hurried down into the
pasture with old Shep and brought in the cows. I got through milking
just as Uncle Peabody came. I saw with joy that his face was cheerful.

"Yip!" he shouted as he stopped his team at the barn door where Aunt
Deel and I were standing. "We ain't got much to worry about now. I've
got the interest money right here in my pocket."

We unhitched and went in to supper. I was hoping that Aunt Deel would
speak of my work but she seemed not to think of it.

"Had a grand day!" said Uncle Peabody, as he sat down at the table and
began to tell what Mr. Wright and Mr. Dunkelberg had said to him.

I, too, had had a grand day and probably my elation was greater than
his. I tarried at the looking-glass hoping that Aunt Deel would give me
a chance modestly to show my uncle what I had done. But the talk about
interest and mortgages continued. I went to my uncle and tried to
whisper in his ear a hint that he had better go and look into the
wood-shed. He stopped me before I had begun by saying:

"Don't bother me now, Bub. I'll git that candy for ye the next time I go
to the village."

Candy! I was thinking of no such trivial matter as candy. He couldn't
know how the idea shocked me in the exalted state of mind into which I