demanded Mrs. Day, with some scorn.
"Ye know Marty's got too big to take orders from his marm. He don't do
nothin' but hang about Josiah Pringle's harness shop all day."

"I told him to hoe them 'taters," said Mr. Day, thoughtfully.

"Well, he don't seem ter take orders from his dad, neither. Don't know
what that boy's comin' to," and a whine crept into Mrs. Day's voice. "He
can't git along with 'Rill Scattergood, so he won't go to school. His
fingers is gettin' all stained yaller from suthin'--d'you 'xpect it's
them cigarettes, Jase?"

Her husband was rising slowly to his feet. "Gimme the pail," he grunted,
without replying to her last question. "I'll git the water for ye this
onc't. But that's Marty's job an' he's got to l'arn it, too!"

"Here, Jase! take two pails," urged Mrs. Day. "An' I wish you _would_
git Pringle to cut ye a new pump-leather."

But Mr. Day ignored the second pail. "I don't feel right peart to-day,"
he said, shambling off down the path. "And there's a deal of heft to a
pail of water--uphill, too. An' by-me-by I got ter go down to the dock,
I s'pose, when the boat comes in, to meet Broxton's gal. I 'xpect
_she'll_ be a great nuisance, 'Mira."

"I'll stand her bein' some nuisance if you give me the twenty dollars a
month your brother wrote that he'd send for her board and keep," snapped
Mrs. Day. "You understand, Jase. That money's comin' to _me_, or I don't
scrub and slave for no relation of yourn. Remember that!"

Jason shuffled on as though he had not heard her. That was the most
exasperating trait of this lazy man--so his wife thought; he was too
lazy to quarrel.

He went out at the gate, which hung by one hinge to the gatepost, into
the untidy back lane upon which one end of his rocky little farm
abutted. Had he glanced back at the premises he would have seen a
weed-grown, untidy yard surrounding the old house, with decrepit stables
and other outbuildings in the rear, a garden which was almost a jungle
now, although in the earlier spring it had given much promise of a
summer harvest of vegetables. Poorly tilled fields behind the front
premises terraced up the timber-capped hill.

Jason Day always "calkerlated ter farm it" each year, and he started in
good season, too. The soil was rich and most of his small fields were
warm and early; but somehow his plans always fell through before the
season was far advanced. So neither the farm nor the immediate premises
of the old Day house were