ew all the time?"

I nodded.

"Well, you're a good one!"

We both laughed and fell to talking with the greatest friendliness. I
led him down my garden to show him my prize pie-plant, of which I am
enormously proud, and I pulled for him some of the finest stalks I could
find.

"Take it home," I said, "it makes the best pies of any pie-plant in this
country."

He took it under his arm.

"I want you to come over and see me the first chance you get," he said.
"I'm going to prove to you by physical demonstration that it's better
sport to be a millionnaire than a farmer--not that I am a millionnaire:
I'm only accepting the reputation you give me."

So I walked with him down to the lane.

"Let me know when you grease up again," he said, "and I'll come over."

So we shook hands: and he set off sturdily down the road with the
pie-plant leaves waving cheerfully over his shoulder.

[Illustration: "Somehow, and suddenly, I was a boy again"]

VIII

A BOY AND A PREACHER

This morning I went to church with Harriet. I usually have some excuse
for not going, but this morning I had them out one by one and they were
altogether so shabby that I decided not to use them. So I put on my
stiff shirt and Harriet came out in her best black cape with the silk
fringes. She looked so immaculate, so ruddy, so cheerfully sober (for
Sunday) that I was reconciled to the idea of driving her up to the
church. And I am glad I went, for the experience I had.

It was an ideal summer Sunday: sunshiny, clear and still. I believe if
I had been some Rip Van Winkle waking after twenty years' sleep I should
have known it for Sunday. Away off over the hill somewhere we could hear
a lazy farm boy singing at the top of his voice: the higher cadences of
his song reached us pleasantly through the still air. The hens sitting
near the lane fence, fluffing the dust over their backs, were holding a
small and talkative service of their own. As we turned into the main
road we saw the Patterson children on their way to church, all the
little girls in Sunday ribbons, and all the little boys very
uncomfortable in knit stockings.

"It seems a pity to go to church on a day like this," I said to Harriet.

"A pity!" she exclaimed. "Could anything be more appropriate?"

Harriet is good because she can't help it. Poor woman!--but I haven't
any pity for her.

It sometimes seems to me the more worshipful I feel the less I want to
go to church. I don't kno