else could a rock so
different from every other rock be lying there as though it had just
dropped? He wished he had not so long to wait before he could show it to
his mother. He was tempted to say he saw it fall, but she might ask him
"Honest Injun?" and he decided not. However, if God made crawfish go
into their holes backward just to make boys laugh, and grasshoppers chew
tobacco, why wouldn't He----

The sound of prairie grass swishing about the legs of a galloping horse
made him jump, startled, to his feet and thrust the strange rock into
the front of his shirt. His father reined in, and demanded angrily:

"What you here for? Why didn't you do as I told you?"

"I--I forgot. I got off to look at a funny rock. See, papa!" His black
eye sparkled as he took it from his shirt front and held it up eagerly.

His father did not look at it.

"Get on your horse!" he said harshly. "I can't trust you to do anything.
We're late as it is, and women don't like people coming in on 'em at
meal-time without warning." He kicked his horse in the ribs, and
galloped off.

The abashed look in the boy's face changed to sullenness. He jumped on
his pony and followed his father, but shortly he lowered his black
lashes, and the tears slipped down his cheeks.

Why had he shown that rock, anyhow? he asked himself in chagrin. He
might have known that his father wouldn't look at it, that he didn't
look at anything or care about anything but horses and cattle. Certainly
his father did not care about _him_. He could not remember when the
stern man had given him a pat on the head, or a good-night kiss. The
thought of his father kissing anybody startled him. It seemed to him
that his father seldom spoke to him except to reprimand or ridicule him,
and the latter was by far the worse.

His eyes were still red when he sat down at the table, but the discovery
that there was chicken helped assuage his injured feelings, and when the
farmer's wife deliberately speared the gizzard from the platter and laid
it on his plate the world looked almost bright. How did she know that he
liked gizzard, he wondered? The look of gratitude he shyly flashed her
brought a smile to her tired face. There were mashed potatoes, too, and
gravy, pickled peaches, and he thought he smelled a lemon pie. He
wondered if they had these things all the time. If it wasn't for his
mother he believed he'd like to live with Mrs. Mosher, and golly! wasn't
he hungry! He hoped they wo