our social standing. I supposed that the world was peopled by
Joneses, Lincolns, Humphries and Dunkelbergs, but mostly by Dunkelbergs.
These latter were very rich people who lived in Canton village.

I know, now, how dearly Aunt Deel loved her brother and me. I must have
been a great trial to that woman of forty unused to the pranks of
children and the tender offices of a mother. Naturally I turned from her
to my Uncle Peabody as a refuge and a help in time of trouble with
increasing fondness. He had no knitting or sewing to do and when Uncle
Peabody sat in the house he gave all his time to me and we weathered
many a storm together as we sat silently in his favorite corner, of an
evening, where I always went to sleep in his arms.

He and I slept in the little room up-stairs, "under the shingles"--as
uncle used to say. I in a small bed, and he in the big one which had
been the receiver of so much violence. So I gave her only a qualified
affection until I could see beneath the words and the face and the
correcting hand of my Aunt Deel.

Uncle made up the beds in our room. Often his own bed would go unmade.
My aunt would upbraid him for laziness, whereupon he would say that when
he got up he liked the feel of that bed so much that he wanted to begin
next night right where he had left off.

I was seven years old when Uncle Peabody gave me the watermelon seeds. I
put one of them in my mouth and bit it.

"It appears to me there's an awful draft blowin' down your throat," said
Uncle Peabody. "You ain't no business eatin' a melon seed."

"Why?" was my query.

"'Cause it was made to put in the ground. Didn't you know it was alive?"

"Alive!" I exclaimed.

"Alive," said he, "I'll show ye."

He put a number of the seeds in the ground and covered them, and said
that that part of the garden should be mine. I watched it every day and
by and by two vines came up. One sickened and died in dry weather. Uncle
Peabody said that I must water the other every day. I did it faithfully
and the vine throve.

"What makes it grow?" I asked.

"The same thing that makes you grow," said Uncle Peabody. "You can do
lots of things but there's only one thing that a watermelon can do. It
can just grow. See how it reaches out toward the sunlight! If we was to
pull them vines around and try to make 'em grow toward the north they
wouldn't mind us. They'd creep back and go reachin' toward the sunlight
ag'in just as if they had a compass to sho