lieve it was an answer to prayer.
Maybe he'll settle down to his doctorin' now. Then I went to Bert's,
and I soon saw I could not stay there. Just as soon as I saw your
little bit in the paper, I says, 'The Lord has opened a door!' I gave
Maud a hint that I would clear out some day and go where I would be let
work, and the dear child says to me, 'Grandma, if I ever get a house of
my own you can come and live with me, and you can do every bit of the
work, and everyone will have to do just what you say; they'll have to
go to bed at sundown if you say so.' Maud's the best one I have
belongin' to me. She'll give them a hint that I'm all right."

But Shaw was apprehensive. He knew who Bert was, and he had
uncomfortable visions of Mr. Albert Harris driving up to his door some
day and demanding that Mrs. Peter Harris, his mother, immediately come
home with him; and the fear and dread of former housekeepers swept over
George Shaw's soul. No, he would not give her up! Of course, there were
times when he thought she was rather exacting, and when he felt some
sympathy for Edward's wife forgetting "miffed."

When she was with him about a week she announced that he must have a
daily bath! "It is easier to wash you than the bed-clothes, that's one
reason," she said, "and it's good for you besides. That's what's wrong
with lots of young boys; they git careless and dirty, and then they
take to smoking and drinking just natcherally. A clean hide, mind you,
is next to a clean heart. Now go along upstairs; everything is ready
for you."

Henceforth there was no danger of the hoops falling off the tub, for it
was in daily use, and, indeed, it was not many nights until George Shaw
looked forward with pleasure to his nightly wash.

The old lady's face glowed with pleasure as she went about her work, or
sat sewing in the shade of the house. At her instigation Shaw had put
up a shed for his machinery, which formerly had littered the yard, and
put his wood in even piles.

The ground fell away in a steep ravine, just in front of the house, and
pink wild roses and columbine hung in profusion over the spring which
gushed out of the bank. Away to the east were the sand-hills of the
Assiniboine--the bad lands of the prairie, their surface peopled with
stiff spruce trees that stand like sentries looking, always looking out
across the plain!

Mrs. Harris often sat with her work in the shade of the house, on
pleasant afternoons, looking at this p