y soon father settled back in his
chair and never took his eyes from Sally's shining head as she bent
over the slate, and then he began pulling his lower lip, like when it
won't behave, and his eyes danced exactly as I've seen Leon's. I never
had noticed that before.

Sally went straight on and at last she came to Freshetts. "I am going
to have all of them, too," she said. "The children are good children,
and it will help them along to see how things are done when they are
right; and I don't care what any one says, I LIKE Mrs. Freshett. I'll
ask her to help work, and that will keep her from talking, and give the
other women a chance to see that she's clean, and human, and would be a
good neighbour if they'd be friendly. If we ask her, then the others
will."

When she finished--as you live--there wasn't a soul she had left out
except Bill Ramsdell, who starved his dog until it sucked our eggs, and
Isaac Thomas, who was so lazy he wouldn't work enough to keep his wife
and children dressed so they ever could go anywhere, but he always
went, even with rags flying, and got his stomach full just by talking
about how he loved the Lord. To save me I couldn't see Isaac Thomas
without beginning to myself:

"'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I hear him complain,
You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again.
I passed by his garden, I saw the wild brier,
The thorn, and the thistle, grow broader and higher;
The clothes that hang on him are turning to rags;
And his money he wastes, till he starves or he begs."

That described Isaac to the last tatter, only he couldn't waste money;
he never had any. Once I asked father what he thought Isaac would do
with it, if by some unforeseen working of Divine Providence, he got ten
dollars. Father said he could tell me exactly, because Isaac once sold
some timber and had a hundred all at once. He went straight to town
and bought Mandy a red silk dress and a brass breastpin, when she had
no shoes. He got the children an organ, when they were hungry; and
himself a plug hat. Mandy and the children cried because he forgot
candy and oranges until the last cent was gone. Father said the only
time Isaac ever worked since he knew him was when he saw how the hat
looked with his rags. He actually helped the men fell the trees until
he got enough to buy a suit, the remains of which he still wore on
Sunday. I asked father why he didn't wear the hat too, and father said
the