appealed to Mr. Gwynne's highly optimistic temperament. He was not
to work for a mere salary, but was to purchase outright the various
productions of the National Machine Company and receive a commission
upon all his sales. The figures placed before Mr. Gwynne by the manager
of the company were sufficiently impressive, indeed so impressive that
Mr. Gwynne at once accepted the proposition, and the Mapleton branch of
the National Machine Company became an established fact.

There was no longer any question as to the education of his family. In
another year when his boy had passed his entrance examinations he would
be able to send him to the high school in the neighbouring town of
Easton, properly equipped and relieved of those handicaps with which
poverty can so easily wash all the colour out of young life. A brilliant
picture the father drew before the eyes of his wife of the educational
career of their boy, who had already given promise of exceptional
ability. But while she listened, charmed, delighted and filled with
proud anticipation, the mother with none the less painful care saved her
garden and poultry money, cut to bare necessity her household expenses,
skimped herself and her children in the matter of dress, and by every
device which she had learned in the bitter school of experience during
the ten years of her Canadian life, made such preparation for the
expenses of her boy's education as would render it unnecessary to call
upon the wealth realised from the National Machine Company's business.

In the matter of providing for the expense of his education Larry
himself began to take a not unimportant part. During the past two years
he had gained not only in size but in the vigour of his health, and in
almost every kind of work on the farm he could now take a man's place.
His mother would not permit him to give his time and strength to their
own farming operations for the sufficient reason that from these there