"Oh," laughed the girl, "I always _did_ want a pump that was
painted blue. I saw a picture of one once when I was a little mite, and
it impressed me--such a lovely, bright blue! I thought it went
beautifully with the green grass! But I can get along without it, I
guess."

"We have to get along without having things painted to suit us," nodded
the little, old woman philosophically. But she remembered the blue pump.
There was a can of paint out in the shed room, and there was Jane
Cotton's Sam.

Jane Cotton's Sam was a "feature" of Placid Pond--a whole set of
features, T.O. said. He was a lumbering, awkward fellow, well up to the
end of his teens, the only hope of widowed Jane. The Lord had given him
a splendid head, but the Placid Pond people were secretly triumphing in
the knowledge that Sam had failed to pass in his college examinations,
"head or no head." Jane had always boasted so of Sam's brains, and
predicted such a wonderful future for him! All her soul was set on Sam's
success--well, wasn't it time her pride had a fall? Mebbe now she'd see
Sam wasn't much different from other people's boys.

Jane's heart was reported to be broken by the boy's failure, and Sam
went about sulkily defiant. He made a great pretense of lofty
indifference, but maybe he didn't care!--maybe not! Emmeline Camp knew
in her gentle old heart that he cared. She worried about Sam.

All this the Talented One learned, little by little, in the way country
gossip is learned. She learned many other things, too, about the
neighbors--things that she lay and pondered about. It seemed queer to