the tongue first."

"Pshaw!" said Hughie, disgusted at his exhibition of ignorance, "I knew
that tongue ought to come out first, but I forgot."

"Oh, well, it's just as good that way, but not quite so easy," said
Billy Jack, with doubtful consistency.

It took Hughie but a few minutes after the tongue was let down to
unfasten his end of the neck-yoke and the cross-lines, and he was
beginning at his hame-strap, always a difficult buckle, when Billy Jack
called out, "Hold on there! You're too quick for me. We'll make them
carry their own harness into the stable. Don't believe in making a horse
of myself." Billy Jack was something of a humorist.

The Finch homestead was a model of finished neatness. Order was its law.
Outside, the stables, barns, stacks, the very wood-piles, evidenced that
law. Within, the house and its belongings and affairs were perfect
in their harmonious arrangement. The whole establishment, without and
within, gave token of the unremitting care of one organizing mind, for,
from dark to dark, while others might have their moments of rest and
careless ease, "the little mother," as Billy Jack called her, was ever
on guard, and all the machinery of house and farm moved smoothly and to
purpose because of that unsleeping care. She was last to bed and first
to stir, and Billy Jack declared that she used to put the cats to sleep
at night, and waken up the roosters in the morning. And through it all
her face remained serene, and her voice flowed in quiet tones. Billy
Jack adored her with all the might of his big heart and body. Thomas,
slow of motion as of expression, found in her the center of his somewhat
sluggish being. Jessac, the little dark-faced maiden of nine years,