around a long-handled rake that had been standing against the
front of the house since early spring. There was an air of cosy
and amiable disorder about the place that would have invited
friendly confabulation even had not Uncle Bart's white head,
honest, ruddy face, and smiling welcome coaxed you in before you
were aware. A fine Nodhead apple tree shaded the side windows,
and underneath it reposed all summer a bright blue sleigh, for
Uncle Bart always described himself as being "plagued for shed
room" and kept things as he liked at the shop, having a "p'ison
neat " wife who did exactly the opposite at his house.

The seat of the sleigh was all white now with scattered fruit
blossoms, and one of Waitstill's earliest remembrances was of
going downhill with Patty toddling at her side; of Uncle Bart's
lifting them into the sleigh and permitting them to sit there and
eat the ripe red apples that had fallen from the tree. Uncle
Bart's son, Cephas (Patty's secret adorer), was a painter by
trade, and kept his pots and cans and brushes in a little
outhouse at the back, while Uncle Bart himself stood every day
behind his long joiner's bench almost knee-deep in shavings. How
the children loved to play with the white, satiny rings, making
them into necklaces, hanging them to their ears and weaving them
into wreaths.

Wonderful houses could always be built in the corner of the shop,
out of the little odds and ends and "nubbins" of white pine, and
Uncle Bart was ever ready to cut or saw a special piece needed
for some great purpose.

The sound of the plane was sweet music in the old joiner's ears.