"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.

"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps
on the river when the farm work isn't pressing. Besides, though
it's all play to him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day."

"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather.
"He jest can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't.
When I first moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never
suited me"--

"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did
an' never will suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the
interruption received no comment: such mistaken views of his
character were too frequent to make any impression.

"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here
from Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an'
Rufus was little boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild
cousins o' theirn, consid'able older. Steve would scare his
mother pretty nigh to death stealin' away to the mill to ride on
the 'carriage,''side o' the log that was bein' sawed, hitchin'
clean out over the river an' then jerkin' back 'most into the
jaws o' the machinery."

"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young
one," remarked Mrs. Wiley; " and I don't see as all the 'cademy
education his father throwed away on him has changed him much."
And with this observation she rose from the table and went to the