himself wondering, now and then, if he would never be done with that
part of his trials. For rapid growth has its trials.

"The fact is," he said to himself one day, as he leaned over the north
fence, "I'm more like Ham Morris's farm than I am like ours. His farm is
bigger than ours, all round; but it's too big for its fences, just as
I'm too big for my clothes. Ham's house is three times as large as ours,
but it looks as if it had grown too fast. It hasn't any paint to speak
of, nor any blinds. It looks as if somebody'd just built it there, and
then forgot it, and gone oft and left it out of doors."

Dabney's four sisters had all come into the world before him; but he was
as tall as any of them, and was frequently taken by strangers for a good
two years older than he was. It was sometimes very hard for him, a boy
of fifteen, to live up to what was expected of those extra two years.

Mrs. Kinzer still kept him in roundabouts; but they did not seem to
hinder his growth at all, if that was her object in so doing.

There was no such thing, however, as keeping the four girls in
roundabouts of any kind; and, what between them and their mother, the
pleasant and tidy little Kinzer homestead, with its snug parlor and its
cosey bits of rooms and chambers, seemed to nestle away, under the
shadowy elms and sycamores, smaller and smaller with every year that
came.

It was a terribly tight fit for such a family, anyway; and, now that
Dabney was growing at such a rate, there was no telling what they would
all come to. But Mrs. Kinzer came at last to the rescue; and she
summoned her eldest daughter, Miranda, to her aid.