s not alone
that we missed his help; we had believed in his fidelity as one
believes in the fidelity of a mother, and he had left us without a
word of explanation or regret.

The subject was so painful that, by tacit consent, we both avoided it.
It would have been better, I think, to have expressed our views
freely, for, as we could dwell on nothing else, we seldom spoke at
all, and that added to the gloom of the situation.

Joe had been gone several days, and we had been silently struggling in
the Slough of Despond, when I awoke one morning filled with a new and
ardent resolution, which I proceeded to carry into instant execution.

Jessie was always the first one up. I heard her moving about in the
kitchen, and, making a hasty toilet, joined her there. She was
grinding coffee in the mill that was fastened securely to the
door-jamb. It was, I believe, the noisiest mill in existence; its
resonant whi-r-rr was like that of some giant grist-mill. Jessie
suspended operations as I drew near to remark:

"You're up early, Leslie."

"Yes; I've thought of something, and--"

"It's the early thought that is caught, same's the early worm," my
sister remarked, unfeelingly. Then she added: "Excuse me a minute,
Leslie, I must get this coffee ground, and can't talk against the
mill."

When the coffee was in the pot on the stove, she turned to me again:

"Now what have you thought of that is so wonderful?"

"It isn't wonderful, Jessie. It's sensible."

"It amounts to the same thing."

"Not in this case. First, I think we ought to stop grieving over Joe's
desertion."

Jessie's bright face clouded instantly:

"It is cruel!" she protested.

"I don't feel as if we ought to say that, Jessie. Joe has been a good,
true, faithful friend to us, and he loved father; we, ourselves, loved
father no more than Joe did--"

"Why, Leslie!"

"It is true, Jessie. I feel it, someway, and I am not going to blame
Joe any more; not even in my own thoughts. It does no good, and it
makes us very unhappy. Let's try to be cheerful again, Jessie, and
make the best of it."

"We must make the best of it whether we are cheerful or not."

"Very well, then; one of the first things that we must do, if we are
to depend on our own efforts, is to market that cantaloupe crop."

"What, you and I, Leslie?" Jessie sat down with the bread knife in one
hand and a loaf of bread in the other, the better to consider this
proposition.

"Just you and I, Je