topped to visit. He went on presently but before he was out of sight
Bill Trumbull and Old Peter Endby came up.

There was a worried look in Bill's large florid face and the light of
utter unbelief in Peter's eye. They both laid their arms neighbor
fashion along the fence and watched the toilers silently for a few
seconds. Then Peter spoke up in grieved tones:

"Seems like you might have asked old neighbors to give you a hand,
Frank. I had no notion you was in any such turrible hurry to start
this here new chicken house of yourn. It don't look respectable or
kindly, you acting that way, neglecting to tell old neighbors--"

"It's a slander on this here neighborhood, that's whot it is, Frank,"
Bill Trumbull complained. "Here's Peter and me both old-time
carpenters, full of energy and advice and ripe years and experience,
and you don't drop so much as a hint. Why, I remember the time when we
put up barns with wooden pegs and durn good barns they were and are,
for there's some of them still standing as strong as the day they were
built. There's the Churchill barn. That's our work, Peter's and mine.
Seems you've forgotten considerable, Frank. Why, your father wouldn't
have thought of starting a chicken house without first talking it over
with us."

When they had passed on, Bill supporting Peter's left elbow so's to
case the rheumatism in his partner's left knee, Frank turned amazed
eyes to his assistant.

"Now what in time," he wanted to know, "is the matter with those two
precious old lunatics? Why, Pap Trumbull and Dad Endby are both over
eighty. Dad's so twisted with rheumatism that he couldn't bend to pick
up his pipe if he dropped it. And Pap's got asthma so bad that it's
all he can do to draw his breath on the installment plan. Why, I've
never consulted them in all my born days though I always let them come
over and criticize my work to their heart's content. But something's
eating them to-day."

"Perhaps they're surprised at seeing me, a comparative stranger here,
helping you. They may even be a bit jealous, you know."

Frank's assistant volunteered this explanation wonderingly as if he too
were puzzled about something.

"Well--it gets me," murmured Frank, then added under his breath, "well,
by jinks--if here ain't old Knock-kneed Bailey and Shorty Collins going
by. And they're looking this way. And by the Lord Harry--there's
Curley Anderson. Why, Curley hasn't been over on this side of tow