t, was like a beacon light
to the dull village; sending out its beams on every side.

"She ain't no kind of a manager, I'm 'fraid!" said Bill Harmon. "I give
her 'bout four quarts and a half of kerosene for a gallon every time she
sends her can to be filled, but bless you, she ain't any the wiser! I
try to give her as good measure in everything as she gives my children,
but you can't keep up with her! She's like the sun, that shines on the
just 'n' on the unjust. Hen Lord's young ones eat their lunch or their
supper there once or twice a week, though the old skinflint's got fifty
thousand dollars in the bank."

"Never mind, Bill." said Osh Popham; "there's goin' to be an everlastin'
evenupness somewheres! Probably God A'mighty hez his eye on that woman,
and He'll see her through. The young ones are growin' up, and the
teacher at the academy says they beat the devil on book learnin'! The
boy'll make a smart man, pretty soon, and bring good wages home to his
mother. The girls are handsome enough to pick up husbands as soon as
they've fully feathered out, so it won't be long afore they're all on
the up grade. I've set great store by that family from the outset, and
I'm turrible glad they're goin' to fix up the house some more when it
comes spring. I'm willin' to work cheap for such folks as them."

"You owe 'em somethin' for listenin' to you, Osh! Seems if they moved
here jest in time to hear your stories when you'd 'bout tuckered out the
rest o' the village!"

"It's a pity you didn't know a few more stories yourself, Bill,"
retorted Mr. Popham; "then you'd be asked up oftener to put on the
back-log for 'em, and pop corn and roast apples and pass the evenin'. I
ain't hed sech a gay winter sence I begun settin' up with Maria, twenty
years ago."

"She's kept you settin' up ever since, Osh!" chuckled Bill Harmon.

"She has so!" agreed Osh cheerfully, "but you ain't hardly the one to
twit me of it; bein' as how you've never took a long breath yourself
sence you was married! But you don't ketch me complainin'! It's a poor
rule that won't work both ways! Maria hurried me into poppin' the
question, and hurried me into marryin' her, an' she ain't let up on me a
minute sence then; but she'll railroad me into heaven the same way, you
see if she don't. She'll arrive 'head o' time as usual and stan' right
there at the bars till she gits Dig 'n' Lallie Joy 'n' me under cover!"

"She's a good woman, an' so's my wife," remarked Bi