owed her a letter from my brother Jerry, because I thought it might
interest her. There was something in it to which I had paid little or
no attention, about my going to the city and beginning work in his law
office; to cap that, evidently you had mentioned before her our prize
piece of family tinware. There was a culmination like a thunder clap
in a January sky. She said everything that was on her mind about a man
of my size and ability doing the work I am, and then she said I must
change my occupation before I came again."

"And for answer you've split the echoes with some shrill, abominable
air, and plowed, before her very eyes, for a week!"

Then Laddie laughed.

"Do you know," he said; "that's a good one on me! It never occurred to
me that she would not be familiar with that air, and understand its
application. Do you mean to crush me further by telling me that all my
perfectly lovely vocalizing and whistling was lost?"

"It was a dem irritating, challenging sort of thing," said Mr. Pryor.
"I listened to it by the hour, myself, trying to make out exactly what
it did mean. It seemed to combine defiance with pleading, and through
and over all ran a note of glee that was really quite charming."

"You have quoted a part of it, literally," said Laddie. "'A note of
glee'--the cry of a glad heart, at peace with all the world, busy with
congenial work."

"I shouldn't have thought you'd have been so particularly joyful."

"Oh, the joy was in the music," said Laddie. "That was a whistle to
keep up my courage. The joy was in the song, not in me! Last week was
black enough for me to satisfy the most exacting pessimist."

"I wish you might have seen the figure you cut! That fine team, flower
bedecked, and the continuous concert!"

"But I did!" cried Laddie. "We have mirrors. That song can't be
beaten. I know this team is all right, and I'm not dwarfed or
disfigured. That was the pageant of summer passing in review. It
represented the tilling of the soil; the sowing of seed, garnering to
come later. You buy corn and wheat, don't you? They are vastly
necessary. Much more so than the settling of quarrels that never
should have taken place. Do you think your daughter found the
spectacle at all moving?"

"Damn you, sir, what I should do, is to lay this whip across your
shoulders!" cried Mr. Pryor.

But if you will believe it, he was laughing again.

"I prefer that you don't," said Laddie, "or on Ran