"I notice you're always due at the bridge on churnin' days," remarked his
spouse, testily.

"'T ain't me as app'ints drivin' dates at Edgewood," replied the old man. "The
boys'll hev a turrible job this year. The logs air ricked up jest like Rose's
jack-straws; I never see 'em so turrible ricked up in all my exper'ence; an'
Lije Dennett don' know no more 'bout pickin' a jam than Cooper's cow. Turrible
sot in his ways, too; can't take a mite of advice. I was tellin' him how to go
to work on that bung that's formed between the gre't gray rock an' the shore,
--the awfullest place to bung that there is between this an' Biddeford,- and
says he: 'Look here, I've be'n boss on this river for twelve year, an' I'll be
doggoned if I'm goin' to be taught my business by any man!' 'This ain't no
river,' says I, 'as you'd know,' says I, 'if you'd ever lived on the
Kennebec.' 'Pity you hed n't stayed on it,' says he. 'I wish to the land I
hed,' says I. An' then I come away, for my tongue's so turrible spry an'
sarcustic that I knew if I stopped any longer I should stir up strife. There's
some folks that'll set on addled aigs year in an' year out, as if there wa'n't
good fresh ones bein' laid every day; an' Lije Dennett's one of 'em, when it
comes to river-drivin'."

"There's lots o' folks as have made a good livin' by mindin' their own
business," observed the still sententious Mrs. Wiley, as she speared a soda
biscuit with her fork.

"Mindin' your own business is a turrible selfish trade," responded her husband
loftily. "If your neighbor is more ignorant than what you are,--partic'larly
if he's as ignorant as Cooper's cow,--you'd ought, as a Kennebec man an' a
Christian, to set him on the right track, though it's always a turrible risky
thing to do." Rose's grandfather was called, by the irreverent younger